Tag Archives: mamala

Some one I love is living with Alzheimer’s

I got to spend time with my mamala for her birthday. She is wonderful and she is perfect. And she is worried and fearful that something may actually be wrong, or maybe people just think something is wrong and she is perfectly fine. Either way, she is bothered.

I wasn’t able to make her laugh as much this visit. Making her laugh has been my focus for the past few years, because it is such good medicine. We laughed this visit, but less. If I’m wry or sarcastic, it’s totally lost on her now. I have to be very gentle with teasing or she might think I’m being mean.

And then there was the coffee. She and my dad make half-caf, so when I visit, I always have to bring my own high-powered coffee. For the past couple of years, she had taken to grabbing my coffee, cup after cup every morning, and “doctoring it up” the way she likes: lots of artificial sweetener and a generous swish of milk to lighten it up.  I’d sometimes have to make coffee 4 times just to get to enjoy a cup of straight black before she got to it and thought it was hers. It drove me crazy.

But this visit, she never reached for my cup. She didn’t even try. She waited for me to bring hers to her, and then we both had our coffee, the way we each liked it.

You may not think that is a big deal, but I see her changing, backing away, noticing less each time. She is getting smaller, not just physically, but in the way she occupies the atmosphere. I am mourning the parts of her I will never see again. But wait…for a flash, for a split second, there it is again…but then gone.

It really is the long goodbye.

mom and dog 6.5.16 small

She asked me to teach her to use the TV control. We worked and worked on it. She used to be the techie in the family, she was the one who would hook up the TV to the VCR to the DVD player and whatever else or call Dave for computer help and she’d figure it out. It’s gone now. After 15 minutes, she still could not retain that the on-off button was top, right.

I used to be able to do this. What in the world is wrong with me? Why can’t I do this anymore? It’s like I am going backwards or something,” she kept saying to me.

It’s the same question she asked about the washer and dryer and her CD player and the telephone. She doesn’t even ask about the gas stove. The microwave is starting to become mysterious, now. Sometimes you put your coffee in and it comes out hot and other times, it doesn’t. Why is that, she is wondering?

I told her gently, very gently. Yes. These medicines are because you were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Yes, your memory problems are part of Alzheimer’s. Do you know very much about that?

It perturbed her. “You mean that is what they are saying I have? That is why they keep giving me these pills?!” as if a diagnosis is an accusation of some sort. She doesn’t like it. But I know she won’t recall it anyway. Tomorrow, she’ll wonder why she “keeps going backwards,” remembering just enough to know she is losing something…

But I told her that she is doing fine, just fine. And then I promised her I would remember for her, so she shouldn’t worry. And she cried. She just fell into my arms and wept.

And I assured her that love isn’t a memory that can be forgotten, that it will always stay up to date, so we would just keep on loving each other. Every little thing will be alright, mamala….
And I just held her for a while.

mom and bogey 6.16 small

—————–xoxoxo——————

You can learn more about Alzheimer’s at www.alz.org. There are articles about the signs and symptoms and great resources for caretakers. They remind us that everyone with a brain is at risk for this. And I am passionate about raising awareness because this woman, my sweet mom, is the last person on earth who would deserve to be fighting this battle, but Alzheimer’s doesn’t care. So I hope we can find a cure so my own children and theirs are not left watching the pieces of the people they love fall away, and are not left holding the bag as this insidious disease ravages our nation and the world.

Alzheimer’s is the only disease among the top 10 causes of death in America that cannot be prevented, cured or even slowed. – alz.org/facts

#endalz #thelonggoodbye #alzheimers #igopurplefor my mamala…

My Memory-Keeper is Losing Hers…

Sometimes I feel sorry for myself about this, which is the most selfish thing ever!

She is the first human being on earth who knew anything at all about me, from that first tinge of morning sickness. The longing of her heart, and lucky me! God chose her for me.

My mom delighted in me, her first child, after losing other babies, “miscarriages,” not sure she would ever carry to term. But she did. Then she delighted again in my brother Joe when he came along 18 months later, then Tim, then Tami and finally Danny. She had 5 babies in slightly more than 7 years. And it has been her heart’s joy to love us and ponder all the things about us.

“I have the greatest kids in any city or state. That’s the honest truth. I love my kids and I want to tell everybody and I don’t care who it is. I have the best kids and now I have grandkids and greats and I love it. I love every single one of them! It might take me awhile to remember all their names, but if I had time I could…” -my mamala, today on the phone

More than all the “adopted” spiritual sons and daughters and  the thousands of devoted and treasured friends she has amassed along her life’s journey as a pastor’s wife, she has delighted and reveled in loving her five children, her babies more than anything.

There are boxes in her closet filled with scraps of paper, journals, and backs of church bulletins where she has scribbled notes, a story about one of us or a scripture she felt was meant for me or a sibling. There are lined pages with our names at the top documenting the funny things we said or did, cute quotes, all the things she thought were so brilliant she never wanted to forget. All through our lives, she has loved to tell and retell our stories. She’ll say, “Remember when you thought eyelashes  were ‘eye-blashes?’ Or when you didn’t like sour foods because you felt they were ‘screamy?'”

She kept record that my little brother, Joe, called hub caps “cupstacks,” and referred to his pant legs as “pant sleeves.”  And she wrote down that our baby sister, Tami, called cow’s milk “wet whip cream” and freckles “sparkles” because it was cute. Danny, the baby of the family, referred to yesterday as “last morrow,” which is pretty astute, actually. And what do these silly moments have in common? Nothing but a mom who thought they were amazing enough to save them.

june 4 mamala and me 2016

And because her attention to us and love for us are grooved so deeply in her heart and brain, many times she can still access these same memories as if nothing is wrong, as if this form of dementia  isn’t reaching in and stealing from her. But other times, she can’t.

The person who has carried the memory of me longer than anyone, who has documented and celebrated every day of my existence, the woman who has cried with me in hard times, paced the floor praying with me during crisis, danced and rejoiced over my victories, encouraged me to do things that scared me because she thought absolutely no one could do it better than me, the one who has believed that I was heaven-sent and wonderful in every way and has oohed and aahed over even the insipid mundanity of my life and days – she is living with Alzheimer’s.

This woman, who has catalogued our lives, collected the bits and pieces of us, set herself to create and then commemorate each memory, and share it with enthusiasm and joy across the years, she is battling a memory thief.

She is living with the disease, and she is working hard to hold on. She says to me, “It’s like I’m going backwards. What is happening to me?”

But here I am, feeling sorry for myself.

Who will remember my first solid food and be able to tell the story with such glory? Or how fantastically I navigated those concrete stairs when I first saw them and how even though she wanted to stop me so I wouldn’t get hurt, she let me try anyway? She tells the story with great tension and animation, as if I am the only baby ever to have climbed stairs, and she tells me how she cheered for me as I reached the top and turned around and sat down, satisfied with my victory. She was so proud. Who will remember or care about those things? In the scope of everything, what does that story matter anyway? But still. She was keeping it for me, periodically encouraging me with a glorified vision of myself as a baby…

No one else will ever know me like my mama does.

It’s what we do as moms. Like Jesus’s mother, Mary, she “pondered these things and held them in her heart.”

Today, when we spoke on the phone, as if everything were as it has always been, she blessed my future, she gave me a message for Dave and said I needed to get a dog, both for protection and to avoid loneliness. Such wisdom, such good advice.

Then she started telling me about a most wonderful day she had experienced ” a week or two ago,” about going downtown to a coffee place and eating outdoors at a sidewalk table and then going across the street to “that big, beautiful building” and how she so wished I could have been there and hopes she gets to do it again and I can come along. She forgot that I was there, I took her to those places.

It made me feel sorry for myself.

But it’s my turn to keep her memories for her now.

– – – -#endalz- – – –

Important information

June is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month and it is my mom’s birth month. I am talking openly about a disease that kills people because I want to raise awareness and say we need to act. There is no one less deserving of Alzheimer’s than my mom, no one. But it doesn’t care who you are.  The Alzheimer’s Association will say anyone with a brain is at risk, as this disease is set to reach epidemic proportions in our lifetime, according to researchers.

I want our generation to set themselves to stopping this disease before it reaches predicted, staggering numbers which will be visited upon our children and theirs. Let’s spread the word!

#endalz  #igopurpletoendalz  #someoneilovehasalzheimers

Here are the facts:

quick-facts-2016

Watch this 1 minute and 45 seconds to hear more:

I hope all your memories are in a safe place.

A Woman’s Life by Stonehouse

By Stonehouse, the artist

I just wanted to share this beautiful “live” drawing as a reminder to see past what we think we know about the women around us.

My sister-in-law, Dawn, recently shared these words from a Twila Paris song, “Same Girl,” in the comments at this blog, a post about my mom, who is dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease.

“Picture with me if you can, a little girl in a younger land, running, playing, laughing, growing stronger. But now her aged limbs have failed and her rosy cheeks have paled. Look beyond the lines ’til you remember. She’s still the same girl running down the hill, she’s still the same girl, memories vivid still. Listen to her story and her eyes will glow. She’s still the same girl, and we need her so…”

My mom on the right.
My mom on the right. 1942?

“Listen to her story and her eyes will glow…”  This is true of every woman, from the little girl so small she can barely express in words, to a young woman falling n love for the first time, to a harried wife and mother who is living to serve and run. It is true as the children leave the nest and the gray hair emerges. It is truer than true as age and aches and pains become the norm, And it is true for even the woman who is struggling to maintain some sense of who she is while suffering dementia.

{{Listen to her story: from my youngest granddaughter and the bigger ones, too, to my lovely daughters, to my sister and the sweetest sister-in-laws I have been blessed with to my cherished mamala, and all the dearest of friends and godly women who have invested in me and younger women who so kindly allow me access to their hearts...}}

My mom on the right.
My mom on the right. 1940?

If some one, anyone, will just listen, we have a story to tell. We know some things, in spite of anything we’ve forgotten or how old-fashioned and outdated we may seem to have become. Because where you are, we once were, too.

My mom on the left. School days. She might be 8 or 9 in this photo.
My mom on the left. School days. She might be 8 or 9 in this photo.

And to tell you, too, that even as Alzheimer’s robs my mom of more and more of her abilities, her confidence and cognitive skills, what we are seeing is, miracle of miracles, Norma Jean :: the little girl who loves all the pretty things and all the people and has the simplest faith – she re-emerges, she is herself, true and pure. “She’s still the same girl, and we need her so!”

Me, my mom, and my little sister :: out on the town
Me, my mom, and my little sister :: out on the town, Avon, IN. Oct. 2015

 

Everyone with a brain is at risk for Alzheimer’s.” – www.alz.org

See more things I have written about this Alzheimer’s journey here

Everything is just so beautiful.

We walked the meadow behind the house. We walked it again and again, my mamala and I, this past week when I went to visit. The trees were barely turning and the assortment of wildflowers and weeds were thriving in the mild midwest autumn. Butterflies and moths darted flower to flower, a cow moo-ed just beyond the treeline.

“I think that cow is hungry,” my mom told me following each moo. She wants to feed all the hungry, like always.

10 15 15 mom 2

Camera ever in hand, she took pictures of every possible thing out there, because, as she told me repeatedly, “Everything is just so beautiful! Do you see this? I’m telling you, it is just so beautiful!”

And I thought the neighbors might wonder why on earth she was snapping pictures of a weed gone to seed, or a whirligig on her back fence, or the clouds in the sky or a tree, then another and yet another, and sometimes a single leaf? A pretty rock? *snap* The neighbor’s barn? *snap* These purple flowers? *snap*snap* Oh, but wait…those purple flowers, too *snap!*

As if she heard my thought, she responded, “I know people might wonder why I am taking these pictures, but I just love life! I do! I love everything about it and God made everything beautiful!  Everything is just so beautiful, I’m telling you!

10 15 15 mom 4

And in the time we’d walk and talk and sing and snap pictures, she’d tell me the same thing over and over. Everything is just so beautiful! Every-thing!

Because she really didn’t remember she had just told me…3 minutes before. And she wanted to make sure I would know.

mom and cam oct 16

My mom has dementia (most likely caused by Alzheimer’s Disease). I have wanted to write about it, but couldn’t because on occasion, though her computer skills were among the first of the losses, she might still have occasionally found her way to my blog. But no more. And each time I see her, I see less of her. So I am keen to hold on to what remains: her wisdom, her laughter, her zeal for nature and taking pictures. She still hugs me like there is no tomorrow (does she know?) and tells me I’m wonderful, my biggest cheerleader. She is losing dates and names and physical strength, but her creativity and love for beauty and her love for family remain intact. So far.

IMG_8405

So each trip to see her, I look for the message she is still intent on writing on my heart (ever my mommy). This time it is this: No matter where you are and how unsatisfactory the circumstances might seem, look around, Jeanie. Open your eyes. See all God has done. Everything is just SO beautiful – you are surrounded by beauty. 

IMG_8005

I hope I get my mom’s loving, appreciative, grateful, beauty-seeing, clear-visioned eyes. I think she is trying to impart them to me.

so beautiful mamala

Geese for Breakfast

NW Indiana in September.

“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.”
– Aldo Leopold

#NWIndiana #SeptemberMorn 1

I’m visiting the parentals in Chicago-land. Keeping up with my mamala who can actually, truly, for real talk to the animals (and they talk back to her) is a hoot. This morning she insisted I snap a couple of pics of the morning sun while we were enjoying our coffee. I got this one.

#NWIndiana #SeptemberMorn 2

And this one.

#NWIndiana #SeptemberMorn 3

Of course she made over them, how I’d captured the changing leaves and the light just right. Even though all I did was point, then shoot. She gives me credit for capturing the beauty.  And she assures me I could become a high-paid photographer if I wanted to.

She believes in me. *sniff

#SeptemberMorn #NWIndiana geese and mom 1

Then she noticed, as we were gawking at the morning sun through her back door, about 60 or so geese out on her back lawn, just in from the woods, where the trees meet the grass (“the line” as she calls it). She grabbed her camera and out she went to take pictures of them.

#SeptemberMorn #NWIndiana geese and mom 2 #SeptemberMorn #NWIndiana geese and mom 3

So I grabbed mine and out I went to get pictures of her.

#SeptemberMorn #NWIndiana geese and mom 4 #SeptemberMOrn #NWIndiana geese and mom 5

She circled around and whistled in their language while their leader squawked back at her.

a #Septembermorn #nwindiana

She’d get too close and the geese elders would quack out some instructions and the whole congregation of them would move a ways.

b #septembermorn #nwindiana

My mom got a little too bold so they meandered to the front yard complaining the entire way.

geese talking #septembermorn #nwindiana

geese #septembermorn #nwindiana geese mom talks #septembermorn #nwidiana

They continued feeding. And feeding. And feeding.

geese bossy #septembermorn #nwindiana

And I was thinking, I’d sure like to see them fly away.  But the difference between my mom and I is that she’ll just go enjoy them and watch and wait. However, my coffee was inside getting cold. I tried to communicate to my mom with wild arm swinging from across the lawn: Let’s charge this bunch and watch ’em fly!

 

The geese were not fans of my arm swinging and I think they even interpreted its’ meaning, as 2 or 3 of them started talking very badly about us loudly enough for us to hear. Shameless.

geese disdain

Finally the leader squeaked and squawked and barked some orders. The geese split into two perfectly orderly groups at the instruction.

september morn 1 september morn south geese

Except for two in the middle. They popped their heads up from their morning forage. “What? Are we leaving,” the first asked? “Im not sure,” the second answered as they both looked back and forth not sure what the big deal was.

what's happening

The two groups lined up like little soldiers and got very still, while the two stragglers waddled toward one group with befuddlement. They were facing opposite directions and once each of the birds was in place, the lead gave out the call and just like that – boom! They took off, one group heading north, one heading south.

But I knew the truth. They were meeting at the rendevouz point. What? Did they think I couldn’t hear their plans?

Anyway – soon enough they took off. Back to my coffee.   :)

take-off 1 take-off 2 take-off 3 take-off 4 take-off 5 take-off 6

Just being silly with my sweet mamala.

“It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese. So would I–if I were the wind.”
-Aldo Leopold

take-off 7

 

“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.”
?-Aldo Leopold

September is just one of the nicest months, isn’t it? I shall miss my sweet September morns.

This woman.

My mamala.

mamala and me

She has been teaching me about childlike faith and following Jesus for 54 years,  6 weeks and 4 days.  Each time I get to see her,  I learn more about loving life and finding joy in the beauty around us.   Whether it’s a clear blue sky, a Cocker Spaniel’s floppy ears, hedgeballs (the woman can get some distance on those things, “bowling” them across the yard) or falling leaves ~ all of life is to be treasured, enjoyed and celebrated.

norma moslander with blake, her 11th great grandchild

This was the day mom met Blake , Elise-the-Niece’s baby boy, and my mom’s 11th great-grandchild.  they were fast friends.

To my mom, there is nothing that isn’t just {{wow-isn’t that wonderful!}} stunningly, marvelously, unbelievably fascinating.  She has 75 years and counting to back it up (even though, people, even though the beginnings were hard, tragic, even, the middle was challenging and the things she faces these days are heavy on the heart)!  Still, she can give you a million reasons to stay the course because God will be faithful.

I drink them up, all her reasons.  I soak her in.

Is it any wonder I still want to be just like my mom when I grow up?