December 28, 2006 01:33 PM
I'll Be Home From Christmas
This month, I kept hearing that damned: I'll Be Home For Christmas. Okay, I shouldn't have said that. No offense to Perry Como, who does a lovely job with it. It's just that this is my mother's favorite Christmas song, and whenever I heard it this year, I thought of her.
I was home for Christmas this year, but my mother wasn't. She celebrated, to whatever degree she can celebrate, from her bed in a nursing home a few hundred miles away from me. Christmas, as do other holidays and special events, takes a back seat to the illness that controls most every aspect of her life: Alzheimer's Disease.
The problem is, we only know what we can see. She just can't tell us very much, and that's a horrible feeling. I have no idea what goes on in my mother's head, and whether or not she knew it was Christmas last weekend. My brother went to visit her two weeks weeks ago, when he was in Florida on business. He saw her the day he arrived, then returned again the next day after lunch, though he told her he'd tried to stop by in the morning (but was delayed). When he entered, she told him, "you're late." Apparently, some bits of conversation get through and stick with her. Just with you think you've lost her.
What does it feel like to live in her fog? Does she slip in and out? Does she always know what's going on around her, and perhaps just isn't able to communicate it to us? It's the mystery that keeps me up at night. And it's the mystery I'll never be able to solve.
Comments
I'm sorry about your mother and what you're both going through. It sounds so much like what we went through with my grandmother. I pray you're able to find moments of comfort in the year ahead.
Posted by: Stacy at December 30, 2006 08:39 AM
