The older I get the more I see myself turning into my mother. As Oscar Wilde told us, it’s a tragic inevitability. When I look in the mirror I see her face framed by my hair; my body is the same shape – plus a couple of inches in height (and width; it’s only proportional); I hear her words coming out of my mouth disconcertingly often; I find myself sitting up straight and putting a fist in the small of my back exactly the way she always did, thanks to our apparently matching spinal malfunctions. (She always did say she had a short back.)
I suppose there are also some things about me that aren’t like my mother. I suppose I take after my Dad in some respects. I suppose my feet are his and my eyes are his and my hair is his mother’s and my myopia is my aunty’s and I’m not sure where my interest in cooking came from but maybe it’s just my own.
Even so, though. Every time I open my mouth and the wrong word comes out, as does happen now and then, I wonder if everyone does that when they’re not really paying attention because they’re doing three things at once, or if it’s the beginning of a certain fuzziness.
I haven’t said it out loud here before, but my mum has Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t early-onset or anything; she was diagnosed at about 79, though it did answer questions that I think had been raised quite a few years before that. Her father had it too. Of her four living siblings, she’s the first so far to follow him down that road. She’s still at home, with my dad, but she can’t drive any more and isn’t really safe to be left alone. My conversations with her nowadays are all pretty much in the present tense and usually work their way around to the same questions and answers in the space of about ten minutes. Then I get off the phone and go back to my easy life here, thousands of miles away, and leave my dad, with his own age-related problems, to look after her and deal with the daily frustrations and sadness of living with someone with advancing dementia.
Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Roll the dice. Write it down and take a picture before I forget.
That’s so hard. For all of you. Lots of love across the ocean xxx
I can completely sympathise. My grandma’s memory is entirely gone now. It’s not Alzheimers, but due to a stroke she had two years ago. It’s very hard, and yet very easy as well, when one is far from home. I had the same thought, flying back to Ireland, leaving my mother to care for her own mother.
I want to press a like button for this, but it would seem daft. It’s just sometimes there are no words. Just the need to nod and listen.
Hope things remain as manageable as possible for you all.
Thank you.