‘I lost your father’

Mom took care of Dad, even though she had dementia, too

Mom was agitated when I arrived at the personal care home. She hurried to me and pulled me into the empty library. “I’ve lost your father!”

I didn’t know what to say; my father had died the week before. Mom had been sad and distracted since he passed, but this was different.

“I set him down someplace and can’t find him. I’ve gone up and down these halls looking for him,” she whispered. “I even poked my head in people’s bedrooms. I can’t find him.” Mom’s eyes filled with tears as fear and desperation overtook her. I took her trembling hand.

I still didn’t know what to say.

My parents moved to the home because my dad had dementia and my mother was showing signs of short-term memory loss. She had given up all her activities to take care of him at home, but she had trouble keeping their medicines straight.

Mom refused to use the pill boxes I prepared each week because she had her own system of keeping track of what medications she had given Dad or taken herself. After dispensing a pill, she would turn the bottle upside down to indicate she had given it. Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing when she turned the bottle over. It could have been an hour ago, a day or even a week. While visiting my brother Art, she gave Dad cough syrup every time he coughed — three times in 15 minutes. Mom didn’t remember giving him the syrup, she only knew that he needed to stop coughing. The bottle was taken away from her.

At the care home, she could devote her time to Dad without having to worry about medicines or meals or even cleaning. As a result, they were almost always together. They were the only couple living there and seeing them together made people smile and renewed one’s faith in love.

Not even 5-feet 3-inches at his tallest, Dad had shrunken with age. Something about his diminutive size and the way that he moved, or didn’t move, reminded me of a dancing, pixie-elf charm that a friend wore on a bracelet when I was a kid. Before this, my parents had always been eye-to-eye, both in height and in their marriage. Now Mom hovered over him, literally and figuratively.

While Mom couldn’t remember conversations, what she had for breakfast, or who the president was, she remembered how to care for my father. She was almost always at his side, anticipating his every need. They would hold hands walking down the hall and stroke one another’s arm at mealtime and kiss for no apparent reason. I found this odd because the couple who raised me had not been overtly affectionate.

There had never been any doubt that my parents loved each other, but they had not been demonstrative. They shared quick goodbye kisses in the morning and pecks on the cheek when one of them went to bed before the other, but I never saw much more. We weren’t the stereotypical, openly-affectionate, Italian family with hugs and kisses for friends, family and casual acquaintances. I learned to do those things in college from my friends, not at home from my parents.

I’m not sure if the dementia had removed their inhibitions or if they just knew that their time together was drawing toward an end. They had been married for almost 60 years. To me, it seemed as though they not only were physically supporting each other but also drawing inner strength from being near one another. It was if they wanted to squeeze out as much time together as they could before one of them was gone, lost to dementia or death.

Dad’s disease had progressed to the point where he used a walker, but he had no desire to go anywhere unless Mom took him. If Mom set him down, so she could go do something without him, such as make crafts in the activity room, he rarely got up, and if he did, it was to go find her.

When a loved one has memory loss, you are careful in choosing your words. You want to be clear but gentle. I said, “Mom, Dad passed away last week, remember?”

Relief flooded her face. “So, I didn’t misplace him.”

I nodded.

Then her eyebrows furrowed and she asked, “Did I go to the funeral?”

“Yes, the viewings and the service.”

“I don’t remember that,” Mom said, her voice turning melancholy. “I guess I really did lose him this time.”