My Mom

Whenever I had a problem, or a concern, or a thought, or an issue, or something to celebrate, or an idea, or an achievement, or a question, or I was excited, or I needed a friend, was lonely, sad, angry, happy, grumpy, exhausted, outraged, ecstatic, or any other emotion possible, I always went to my mom. She would listen and respond to every little thing that ever popped into my head. She always had time for me. She was completely attentive. She gave the best advice in the whole world. She made you feel loved. She made you feel comfortable. I've never met anyone better in the world at having a heartfelt conversation. A lot of times I would just go chat her ear off while she was working. Almost all our conversation took place in the kitchen or the laundry room as I obliviously watched her fold clothes or put away dishes. She never really asked for help. I never thought about it much. She just listened and validated and made you feel important and happy while working so incredibly selflessly. Around the time I got married our conversations slowly started to change. I would tell her a story and she wouldn't respond, sometimes she would get angry. We started arguing a lot. Sometimes when I would talk to her I could tell she wasn't listening. I was angry with her. It wasn't until years later I would come to realize that when we had those talks and she just wasn't following the conversation that it would all start to make sense.

I had the pleasure of working with my mom as a dental assistant for a few years after I graduated high school. She was incredible at her job. She knew everything there was to know about everything. She kept the building running. She maintained an cared for every little aspect of our job. She trained me, so I quickly became good at the job as well. She had a lot of extra responsibilities. She ran the water distillers, changed the traps in the basement, sorted through old patient files, ordered all the products, stocked the products, she even decorated the company tree at Christmas. She had everything running perfectly. One day, well into our odd conversations and arguments at home, I realized she had been setting up the trays of instruments wrong. When I asked her about it she got angry with me, accused me of being a mean daughter, cried in the bathroom all lunch. She stopped doing the ordering and I picked up the responsibilities. I think she knew at this time that she was becoming incapable of doing it, but she obviously didn't understand why and didn't want to admit she was struggling. She tried to hide her problems. Sometimes the traps in the basement backed up and we would loose suction because she forgot to change them, or we would run out of nitrogen. What was going on? My mom usually had everything so perfectly under control.

Things at home got more odd all the time. She started telling me disturbing things about her past, some of which I still don't know if they are true or not. She repeated herself constantly. She was angry, an emotion I didn't even realize my mother was capable of. Things spiraled downward swiftly. Doctors thought maybe she had experienced a stroke. They ran all sorts of tests for over a year before finally diagnosing her with Early Onset Alzheimer Disease. My mom was losing her mind and was just barely into her 50's.

Before the actual diagnosis we knew something was wrong, but you still live your life. My mom loved her grandchildren and frequently tended. I had graduated college, had Atlas, and now worked as a house painter. My mom would take Atlas while I was at work and I would frequently come home to him with various wounds from a day of being a toddler. I would ask her what happened. She didn't remember. I have been a vegetarian for 12 years and my little family is vegetarian. My mom knew this was extremely important to me, but she fed Atlas chicken nuggets. She didn't want to throw me a baby shower. She didn't help me plan my wedding. She started forgetting my birthdays. It was, and still is very hard for me not to be angry. It all seemed too unfair, too confusing, so incredibly bizarre.

When we moved to Rhode Island the Summer of 2011 my parents came with us. My Dad, Mom, and little sister drove all the way across the country in the moving truck while Nick, Atlas, Bixler and I drove in our car. My mom seemed confused and frustrated a lot of the trip, but still was mostly lucid. This was the last time I would feel that she was still at least half-way herself. It's been incredibly hard for me to be so far away from her while she has suffered. I missed out on my last moments of time with her while she still knew who I was. I would see her occasionally when my parents came to Rhode Island, or when we went home for the better part of the summer last year and each time I would see her she was a new person. I had Cosby September 5th 2012, the next day I would get an email from my Dad telling me that my Mom no longer lived at home. Caring for her had become impossible for my Dad. Her behavior was insane to say the least. She had become very hostile. She wandered and paced all night, slept a lot of the day. My Dad tried a home care nurse, my mom was suspicious of her, angry with her. She refused to bathe. She stopped taking care of herself completely, she forgot when she ate and started eating non stop. She gained tons of weight, and horded food. She would take treats out of her grandchildren's hands and scarf them down immediately even if the child was crying. She isolated herself. She got lost when driving and could no longer be trusted to leave the house by herself. She threw things across the room. She wore layers upon layers of underwear. My mom could no longer live in the house she had lived in for the last 25 years. Sometimes she didn't even know where she was.

Every tiny shred of dignity has now been erased from my mom. She can't perform basic bodily functions by herself. Every aspect of her life has to be taken care of by a nurse. She has no idea who I am, who her grandchildren are. She is suspicious and often hostile towards us. She is no longer my mom, but some shell of the woman that raised me. I have been in continual mourning from losing her for the last few years. Who is this person that won't hug me, look into my eyes? Who is this person who hates me? As I have dealt with the extreme confusion that this ravaging disease has caused in my family I have found that I am losing memories as well. All my good memories of my mom are slowly fading and being replaced by horrible or strange memories of who she is now. I have caught myself thinking completely negatively about my mom as a person instead of realizing that this is no longer her. When I see her now it's empty, exhausting, and overwhelmingly depressing. I have been going through the stages of grief over and over and over, but for the last few years have mostly been toggling between anger, depression and acceptance. I am slowly starting to remain in acceptance, but I occasionally slip back into more negative feelings. But acceptance has come with a price. As I have accepted my new mom, or my loss of a mom, I have started letting the old mom go. I think I needed to do this for a while so I could grieve the loss, but now I am ready to start remembering who my mom really was. I don't want to think of her as a bitter, insane woman. I want to remember my real mom.

This was my real mom:

I struggled with depression my whole life. My mom knew this. She knew I had an incredibly bad self image and tried to help me combat it at a very young age. When I wanted to go out an play with friends she wouldn't let me until I had written 10 nice things about myself. This seemed like a drag at the beginning but would always end up with me in her arms and her telling me of my own self worth. She always reassured me that I had good qualities and was loved.

My mom never bought herself anything, ever. We had financial difficulties growing up, but she always made sure the kids had everything we needed, even if that meant she still had to wear very out of date clothes or forgo her own interests. She was the kindest woman I have ever met. She was constantly doing things for other people. She got us kids involved. We made blankets and hats for charity, we took Christmas dinner to people, we raked or shoveled the elderly neighbors yards, we took the produce from our garden and shared it with anyone who wanted it. We worked hard at our house. My mom took incredible care of the garden. She never stopped pulling weeds.

My mom always called me a "homebody." I didn't like to be away and would get very homesick. I often walked home in the middle of the night from sleepovers as a child because I missed my home, mostly I missed my mom. I hated going to Girls Camp. One year when I particularly didn't want to go my mom sent me with a little package to open while at camp. I opened it the first night and found letters, one for every night of camp to read from her. They told me stories of her as a young girl, of me, and told me over and over again how much she loved me.

I was a slightly unruly teenager. I got really into punk music when I was 15. Sometimes when I had a bad day my mom would take me on a drive so we could talk. I remember once I brought my Anti Flag CD to show her in the car. I played it for her and talked to her all about anarchy and why I thought it was a good idea. This is one of my funniest memories. She listened and validated me and told me how smart I was to be thinking about politics at such a young age. Ha ha! She was always proud of us.

I also started sneaking out of the house at night a lot. I always thought no one noticed. Years later when I worked at the dentist office with her, a fellow coworker mentioned something about me being a bad teenager. She had worked with my mom a very long time. I asked her what she knew about it and she mentioned that I always would sneak out. I asked her how in the world she knew that and she told me that my mom used to cry frequently at work because she was so worried about me. I never knew this. I never even knew she knew. Before I left the house as a teenager she would say, "Remember Erin, be a what?" and I would have to say "a lady" as I rolled my eyes and went out the door. That was the only thing she did to indicate how worried she was about me. She just loved me into being a good kid instead of trying to force me into it.

When I first started spending time with Nick, I offhandedly mentioned that Nick and his roommates never had any food in the house. Not because they couldn't afford it or anything, just because they were a bunch of college age boys. One night when I was going to see him she sent me with a bag of chips and some home made salsa fresh from the garden. Nick loved it and ate the entire jar basically in one sitting and told her the next time he saw her. She started sending me with jars of salsa for him nearly every weekend.

My mom was a fantastic cook. When I went vegetarian she went out of her way to make vegetarian options for me at dinner and started cooking vegetarian frequently. She still always made a big roast on Sundays and spent nearly the whole day in the kitchen. When I was about 17 I decided to start learning from her and would spend the day in the kitchen with her. While she attended to the meat I would mash the potatoes, saute the vegetables, or pop the roles in the oven. We always had great conversations while doing this. Every meal I make feels like a small tribute to her now.

When I was 7 we took a family road trip to Disneyland. My older brother liked to tease me incessantly and was giving me a lot of crap. He always sat in front of me in the Astro Van. I frequently got car sick. After a long day of being teased I started feeling queasy, but instead of using my designated plastic sack I just stood up and barfed on my brother's head. Rather than getting mad at me for making a mess that she had to clean up and making our car smell like barf, she quietly pulled me aside, asked if I was ok, and told me she was proud of me for sticking up for myself.

My mom took ceramics classes, and toll painted, and stenciled every room in the house. I always felt so lucky that I got to grow up in a colorful house. Every room was a different color. I loved it, and it will always stick with me.

My mom worked and was often exhausted when she got home. But she still always made dinner. After dinner we would fight over who got to cuddle with her, so she would cuddle us each 5 minutes, usually still in her work clothes, never ever getting any time to herself to unwind from her busy day. She always smelled like the dentist office. I still love the smell.

My mom was enthusiastic about my art career. When I was in college she cleared out an extra room in the basement and bought me some shelves and lighting so I could have my own studio space.

I really struggled my junior year of high school. I had a 30% attendance rate at school and a 1.1 GPA. My mom never got mad. In fact, she frequently covered for me when I missed class because she knew I was having a hard time with anxiety and other problems. Instead of punishing me she asked me repeatedly what she could do to help me.

My mom didn't take much time for herself, but she did have a few good friends in the neighborhood that got together frequently. We referred to them around my house as "The Ladies." As we got a little older, my mom finally had a little more time to hang with The Ladies. I really liked all of The Ladies. I was probably 18 when my mom asked if I wanted to join her on an outing with The Ladies. We all went out to dinner and it was so fun to see my mom in that atmosphere, with her friends. The Ladies took my mom toilet papering for the first and only time in her life. She loved it. My mom could get really silly but was pretty bashful about it. All the ladies loved my mom and joked about how she was the most perfect person on Earth and would soon be translated, or that she was an angel in disguise sent here to teach us all how to behave. She laughed and brushed off these comments and always got embarrassed  She was pretty quiet socially, always a little timid, but everyone loved her.

On "ortho day" at work, the day we saw all the orthodontic cases, or in other words, all the teenagers in braces, my mom really shined. She was at the top of her game on those days, not only because she was excellent at her job, but because she genuinely loved the pimply, self-expression obsessed, smelly teenagers we were working on. She constantly taught me not to judge a book by it's cover and that everyone has worth. She could get the most stoic gothic kid laughing or get cripplingly timid patients to tell her their life story, all while she had her hands in their mouth. Everyone loved her.

I have many cherished memories of her that I am terrified of losing. Mostly I want to remember the feeling I had when I would lay my head on her shoulder and we would laugh together, or cry together, or be silent together.

Everyone loved her. I loved her. I still love her, even though it is much, much more difficult now. When I see her now I wonder where my mom is and I miss her. I forget all these good things about her and just see the disease. I am so grateful to have these memories of my mother so I can remember who she really is. I love her so much and am going to try harder to remember my real mom. Happy Mother's Day to the perfect mother.