Tears in rain: Mother's Day with Alzheimer's

Hold on to the blessings, and the love

My last memory of my mother, when she was alive, was her being fed like a small child. We had told her that her husband of over 31 years had passed only hours earlier, and she didn’t register any understanding of what she heard. My mother, Rose, had lost herself to Alzheimer's, and my step-father, Danny, had spent his last ten years caring for her. She lasted 16 days after that last visit to the nursing home; her death certificate listed “failure to thrive” as her cause of death. I think that our message found its way into Rose’s “self,” and she decided she would rather go than stay in this flesh and bone world.

Image: ChatGPT

I am writing to all the families who have mothers with Alzheimer's, or other types of dementia, this Mother’s Day. I am writing to children who have lost their mothers to the thief that steals memories, then leaves the husk of a once razor-sharp mind and towering will, to wither in the acid rain of confusion and chaos.

It’s okay if you feel that the end of that life seems more a relief than something to mourn. There, I said it.

All the mourning, and the trials, and the mental suffering, and the Groundhog Day of life where every day is a repeat of yesterday, except worse, leads inexorably toward the loss of the person upon whom the focus of help, restoration, even if not a cure, but simply a respite, a glimmer of hope, a shaft of light into the mind, the present, an awareness, every moment is placed; the mourning is done. The loss is real. The end of that life is not the devastating loss, but the grief can be the guilt of welcoming it instead of the shock of departure.

My mother attended my wedding a year before she passed. Actually, she attended the reproduction of our wedding, as the formal ceremony was held six weeks earlier. We did it again, on Mother’s Day, in 2007, on Captiva Island, Florida. Both the venue and my mother’s memory of it have since been washed away by the physical hurricane and the one that raged in her mind. But I did get one dance with my mother, with Frank Sinatra crooning “Fly Me To The Moon.”

The guilt of surviving an Alzheimer’s mom is difficult, and made more so by the teasing of possible wonder drugs and cures. I know the thoughts, even 17 years ago, that perhaps had she lived, another treatment might have lengthened her life. Maybe if my step-father had not been so devoted to keeping her in a familiar place, with him, instead of shipping her off to an assisted living facility, he would have lived to enjoy his last years.

You see, Danny was ill, and did not seek the treatment he needed, because he could not leave my mother alone. So when he finally decided to move her, my friend and I came down to help him with that. I remember when he left his house to go to my step-brother’s home, because he wasn’t feeling well. I remember that was the last time he ever left his home. He had passed just three weeks later. And my mother passed 16 days after that.

The guilt and the shock was not that I had lost both my mother and step-father within weeks of each other, but that my mother’s passing was like the wind and rain after a gust front. It just sort of faded away.

Actor Rutger Hauer was asked by director Ridley Scott to ad-lib the last words of Ray Batty, the replicant anti-hero of Blade Runner. Those haunting words could describe the fading memories of someone with Alzheimer's, cut off from the world far before their lives should end.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Time to die.

I know that’s pretty morbid stuff for a day devoted to living mothers, with living children, who nurture, and play, and make lunches, and (bless them!) change diapers, and teach, discipline, lead, shape, and love their children.

My mother did all those things. She loved her children fiercely. My wife is a wondrous mom to our children. My extended family boasts some veritable Mary Poppinses. I think my sister-in-laws must hide those flying umbrellas in a back closet when I visit. I praise them and shower them with the favor they deserve but frequently do not receive.

But I am writing this to a particular audience, whose view of Mother’s Day has been marred by the tears in rain of memories that have run like watercolors in a toddler’s fingerpainting left outside in a gentle spring shower.

When those moms are gone, the moments live on in our memories. And it’s okay to celebrate the memories, to repaint them in glorious color. It’s okay to forget the last moments of a difficult life robbed by the disease and ravaged by dementia. It’s okay to walk away from the pain and embrace the “things you people wouldn’t believe.” It’s okay to lionize the fierce love.

And for those whose mothers are with them, but away because of the disease, it’s okay to hope. It’s okay to hope for some glimmer of the present, or some cure that may come tomorrow, but also may not. It’s okay to give that life to God, or to whatever fate you may embrace. It’s okay to live through the guilt and hold on to the days when things were better.

They will get better—the days will.

You will always have that one last dance on Mother’s Day.