Although it’s been a while since Dad and I have raced, I don’t doubt that he could outrun me. I know he can out-debate me (and he’d say out-think me). My mom can out-walk, out-talk, and out-laugh me. She’s more flexible in her 70s than I was as a teen and remembers details about events that I’ve long forgotten. I’m not sure it’s a testament to how well they’re doing or how poorly I am, but I do know one thing–I’m grateful they are.

 When in the waiting room at my doctor’s office recently, a woman about my age came in with her mom, who appeared to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She helped her still young-looking mother settle in a chair, then went to sign in. The mother immediately began rooting through the purse, grew quickly frustrated, then dumped the purse upside-down and shook out the contents. When she still couldn’t find (or perhaps remember) what she was after, she began to cry. All in the time it took her daughter to sign her name on a page.  

The daughter turned. Her shoulders immediately drooped and she closed her eyes for just a moment, then she hurried to her mother’s side. She scooped the contents back into the purse, talking in a calm, soothing voice.  

The mother kept repeating, “I just wanted a tissue. I needed a tissue.” She looked deeply embarrassed, suddenly aware there were others in the room. Someone handed her a box of tissues, but the mother couldn’t seem to stop repeating that she needed a tissue. 

The daughter sat and put her arm around her mother, then asked the strangest question. “Were you ever any good at throwing?” I saw the hint of a smile on her mother’s face. She sniffled, mopped at her tears with the back of her hand, much like a child, then smiled broadly.

“I’m wicked good at baseball.” 

Until the nurse called my name, I listened to the mother recount her stats and those of the other women on her long-ago team with such pride. Thinking back on it later, I wished I could’ve said something to the daughter. I’m not sure what, but something to acknowledge what she was doing. I kept thinking about how hard it must be–how exhausting and emotionally draining and thankless. I could tell she was tired, but she the way she cared for her mother was something special to see.  

My friend Mary Rodd Furbee, who died in 2004 at age 49, once wrote a beautiful article called “A Song for my Father.” In it, she wrote, 

“Last week, I sang to my seventy-five-year-old father, who has Alzheimer’s disease. I took the hands that rarely cease their futile effort to remove the canvas restraints that tie him to his hospital bed, looked into his half-closed eyes, and sang Red River Valley. It was his favorite song.

 “Slowly, he raised his head, opened his eyes, and gazed up at me like a lost child who has found his mother. When the song ended, this agitated, drugged-up, tied-down, malnourished man who rarely speaks an intelligible word begged for more. So I sang–It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, Get Me to the Church on Time, Daisy-Daisy, Rock-A-Bye Baby–eliciting the sweetest imaginable euphoria and calm. 

“For an hour he gazed at me, transfixed with a joy so powerful that tears streamed down his face. Afterward, he was more relaxed than I had seen him in years.” 

I admire people who handle this cruel disease with such grace. It seems the automatic response to hearing the same thing repeated dozens of times would be to yell, “You told me already!” But that accomplishes nothing but humiliating the person, making them sad.  

 When my friend’s mom began having trouble remembering, her husband would often pretend not to be able to remember it either. The two of them would share a laugh about how it stinks getting old. It seemed like a nice way to keep her from being depressed, and allow her to keep some dignity, too. 

My friend often talked about each stage in the reversal of her mother’s abilities, until her body had even forgotten how to swallow. When she’d talk about caring for her mother, about changing her diapers or sleeping in a chair in front of her mom’s door so she couldn’t “escape,” she always sounded so removed. It wasn’t until years later that she could talk about how her mom would occasionally become briefly lucid again. She said they’d have these amazing talks, like they were catching up after a long trip, and then she’d be gone.  

“Those times were both the best and the worst,” she wrote in an email. “When it was done, I’d be left feeling robbed, like I had lost her all over again. I’d have to work hard to focus on what of her was still left.”

 I pray I’ll never know firsthand what it’s like to be in that place. I want to believe I’d be able to handle it with the same grace and good humor that I’ve admired in others. But I don’t want to know.

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