Semantics

Wednesday afternoon I pulled up to Journeys, the memory-care unit at Friendship Haven where my 92-year-old mother has been living for the past two months. 

One of my sisters refuses to call it "memory care." She says our mom has no memory left to care for and prefers to use the term "dementia care." 

Semantics. As an English teacher, I love a good word squabble as much as anyone. But I don't think the words are truly the issue here. My sister is expressing the deep anguish she feels at watching our mother lose cognition. Euphemisms intending to soften the difficulty of dementia (and there are many) make her angrier. Any sugarcoating denies the hard but true reality: our mother's agile mind, once her most salient trait, is now more chaff than grain. 

Each of my four siblings and I are experiencing our mother's transition into memory/dementia care differently. I'll let them tell their own stories. 

This is mine, for Wednesday, June 14, 2023.

I arrived when my mom was napping after lunch. I entered her room, and it took her only a moment to shift from confused annoyance (I had woken her up) to happy recognition. 

I'd brought a bottle of bubbles with me, and Mom was eager to head out for bubble-blowing. But as we readied to leave, she placed a wastebasket on her walker, indicating she (also? instead?) planned to go for a trash walk.

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I've written about this before, but my mom has been a recycler long before Iowa paid 5 cents per can. Her desire to pick up trash seems to have only accelerated as her memory declines. She delights in spotting a bit of trash as if she'd found an Easter egg!

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I swear I felt her adrenaline surge as she pushed her walker-wastebasket forward. After a short circle on the immaculate campus, we'd managed to collect a few bits of tinfoil, two or three cigarette butts, and a couple of twigs and leaves that looked a little like trash. My mom accepted my insistence that I be the one to pluck trash spotted far from our path; when she bent for the nearby bits, I held her arm firmly and flung a confetti of prayers to the gods of balance. 

Near the end of our walk, we met a woman who lives in the most independent units of Friendship Haven, the condominiums my parents first moved to nearly 20 years ago, when they were considered to be the vibrant young blood of the community. DeAnn greeted me by name, but I stammered hello as I blurred her identity into a sea of nameless "old people." 

After we'd passed, I said to my mom, "I hate it when someone recognizes me and I can't remember who they are." 

My mom laughed and said, "I've been practicing that for years."

Back at Journeys, we sat in the shade and an aide brought out water. My mother's room-neighbor Eleanor joined us on the patio and I played accordion favorites both women sang along to. After I'd played "Blue Skirt Waltz," Eleanor told us about her husband who had loved dancing. I reminded my mom that her first husband, Chuck, had been a square-dance caller. She beamed: "I haven't thought about that for years!"

At least in that moment, we cared not for dementia, but for memory.

Enough.
Be well.
Write. 

Allison