Troubling

It's a troubling time. All weekend Mom kept confusing me with her older sister, Grace, who died several years ago. It's not a new concept, or a surprise. It's common in Alzheimer's. But disturbing to me as I try to measure the progression, as we try to determine the next steps we must take. As I pray to God, "Please, be kind to my mom. She always has been loyal and true to you, to her parents, to her husband and family. Please, Lord, be kind to my mother."

Sunday evening we heard something knocking. It sounded like knocking on a window. I looked but saw no one, so I went outside to investigate further.

"You looking for something?" Carol and Fred called to me from next door.

"We hear knocking. It sounds like a critter between the walls."

"Oh, boy. There are squirrels that run the gutters on the house," Carol said.

Just then the knocking started again. My eyes followed the sound my ears heard. A critter was knocking at the basement window. "Let me out! Let me out!" his panicky tap-tap-tap seemed to say. How? The window doesn't open from outside and I wasn't going down into that cellar. But the front window would if I could find something to prop it open. I don't know if it escaped, but the knocking stopped.

I can't help but compare the event to Mom's condition. Like when I have to say, "I'm your daughter, not your sister."

"Oh. I wish my brain would work right."

"They call it Alzheimer's, Mom."

"I know."

Or when she goes over-the-top angry at something someone says--usually me, now that Dad is gone and I have taken his place as primary. Perhaps it's the only way she has now to beat on the glass, "Let me out! Let me out! I don't want to be trapped here. I need to be free!"

As many well-known names as have gone to bat for Alzheimer's research, I can't help thinking the answers should come more quickly. I can't help thinking that profit margins come into the picture--or rather, not coming into it so everyone would know it's all about profits. Isn't everything? I can't help thinking about the wonderful minds that have been lost to Alzheimer's and dementia at a time in a person's life when they would finally be able to enjoy chasing their dreams after raising a family and working for all of those years. And how many more will be lost between now and the cure on the open market, no doubt at a high cost. (I'll let you determine those high costs.)

How sad that I should feel such skepticism for this miraculous age when Floyd writes to me to say, "I call my sister less now. She has Alzheimer's. She doesn't even know her children now, has lived at the facility for a year..." I know it's just a matter of time for my mom. I can't change a thing. I can't prop open a window that will allow her to escape from the Alzheimer's.