My Mother Has Alzheimer's

By Mark V. Jastrzembski

I wrote this as a tribute to my mother, a humble and gently unassuming housewife and mother who loved and understood everything about life and all of its great mysteries. Although Alzheimer s disease relentlessly and ruthlessly ravaged both her mind and body, her soul remained untouched and pure. This book chronicles her struggles, which certainly impacted the lives of everyone for both the better and the worse. In the end, though, her final lasting lesson was that even in sickness, she still was able to reveal to her loved ones the beauty that surrounds each of us. We learned from her, and for this, we each became better human beings. I wish to share that message of comfort and hope with you, dear reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781634174695

Book preview

Preface 

I wrote this book as a tribute to my mother. My words are wrapped in her love. It chronicles her struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and how that disease impacted our entire family. I wanted to provide a snapshot of her life before and after the disease to show how devastating Alzheimer’s is on both the victim and the family. My mother went through a terrible ordeal, but our family emerged stronger in faith and with a greater appreciation for the beauty of life. We learned and grew from her disease. 

I should note that this book is not intended to be a primer on the care of an Alzheimer’s patient. Questions about the disease and the care of a loved one stricken with Alzheimer’s should be directed to a health care professional. 

What I do hope is that by sharing the memories of my mother’s struggles with this disease, you will gain knowledge and strength whether or not you personally have a loved one that has Alzheimer’s. 

For those of you who are caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s, you already know that the journey you are on can be frightening. You may feel lonely, sad, angry, frustrated, and overwhelmed at times. You must keep in mind, however, that others have already traveled down that road. You are not alone. These are my words to you; never give up, never despair, and never be discouraged. With faith and determination, you are going to be okay. 

I think you will be able to relate to some of the things I have written about my mother. In that way, I want to connect with you and your loved one. Perhaps our family’s story will give you some comfort and strength. That is my main purpose in writing this book. Although at times I write at great lengths about my own life, this really is the story of my mother. 

CHAPTER 1 

My Mom 

I never cried at my mother’s funeral. I didn’t cry the night she passed away nor did I cry at the graveside. I was all cried out way before then. A relative at the funeral remarked how brave I was upon my mother’s death. Any bravery attributed to me was clearly misplaced. The truly brave one was resting gracefully in her rosewood coffin. I suspect that others may have secretly wondered why I seemed so unmoved when my father, two brothers, and various aunts and uncles were emotional wrecks. My stoic demeanor was tempered with an absolute knowledge that my mother was finally at peace in a far better place, smiling down on all of us. That was foremost on my mind when I gave the eulogy at the funeral mass. There were no tears from me, and my words only recounted the happy days that were the essence of her life. I didn’t want our family and friends to be sad but to smile and laugh. That was the only way she would have wanted it. 

The more distant relatives and friends seemed shocked at her sudden passing, but my mother had passed on many years before she actually closed her eyes on that final day in mid-June. We lost her way before that official date of death. Her mind had slowly drifted away from us, and then in the ending months, it washed away ever so rapidly. All that we could do was watch as helpless bystanders as she gently slipped from sight. You see, my mother had Alzheimer’s. 

I can’t begin to tell you the number of times I used the phrase my mother has Alzheimer’s, to explain the behavior of my mom during the last years of her life. It seemed to say it all; the inability to recognize friends or family, the frustration of not being able to find the words to complete a sentence, and the sudden screaming in a restaurant for no apparent reason. Then there was the slurred speech, the late-night wandering, the obsessive/compulsive behavior, the forgetfulness, the drooling, the striking out, and of course, the incontinence. There is nothing in this world so sad as to see your loved one no longer able to control their own bodily functions. Those are just some of the things that Alzheimer’s can do to anyone stricken with this disease. How curious that this strange word has come to mean so much; how foreboding and ominous like so many other terrible diseases— cancer, leukemia, and AIDS. This is a disease that had a name given to it only within the last few decades, and now, everyone is at least familiar with it and what the word Alzheimer’s has come to mean. Each of us probably knows of someone suffering from this disease, be the famous like the late R. Sargent Shriver, college football coaching legend Eddie Robinson, the late President Reagan, a personal friend, or a relative. This is the story of how my mother became one of its victims and how it changed the lives of everyone around her. 

My mother, Virginia, will not be remembered for having done anything publicly noteworthy during her nearly eighty-two years of life. She didn’t write the great American novel. She didn’t find a cure for any disease. She never led any social movement. She didn’t start her own company. She never ran for political office. She wasn’t a singer or movie star (although her wedding day picture showcases a strikingly attractive natural beauty). She was far too self-effacing to assume that anyone would be interested in the talents she possessed. My mother was an ordinary yet elegant woman and a humble but very proud homemaker. That word homemaker really meant something special in days past. Although my mother worked prior to being wed and she had marketable skills, Dad and we children, came before career. So in a way, my mom wasn’t looked up to by anyone other than her own family members; and that was good enough for her. In that sense, she was like so many other moms who seemingly live their lives in quiet obscurity, but she lived it with no regrets. Her only claims to fame were four lines in our local newspaper’s human interest section on some crocus bulbs that bloomed in her garden in the middle of a bitter Michigan winter. She kept that article under glass on the kitchen table. She also was asked by our local public library to display some antique dolls from her extensive collection for a special children’s program. She spent weeks preparing for this, making sure that each doll was perfectly presented. To have her dolls showcased at the Hackley Public Library was an incredibly great honor for her. How curious that these two events would be the only public recognition she would receive for all her years on this earth! Stories about housewives that do the routine, mundane things in this world are not the sort of things that capture the public’s imagination. Everyone’s life, however, is special in some unique way. So it was that when she passed on neither poet nor princess could have enriched our family and friend’s lives as much as this one gentlewoman—my mom. 

My mother was a child of the Depression. Her life was shaped by the events and circumstances of those desperate but interesting times, which so few of us are able to relate to anymore. In these days of wealth and promise, most of us can’t really get a feel for what it must have meant to be genuinely worried about having enough food to feed the family or enough money to pay the doctor or to make the next month’s mortgage payment. Fear about tomorrow was absolutely real. You could touch it, and you could see it in the eyes of the entire nation. 

Born in 1916 to second generation Swedish parents, my mother—although very intelligent—dropped out of high school in her junior year because she needed to work to help the family get through those troubled years of the Depression. The only available job she could find was a domestic servant/nanny for a doctor’s family. She scrubbed their floors, cleaned bathrooms, washed and ironed clothes, served meals, and took care of the doctor’s children to supplement her father’s factory wages. The job called for her to work six days a week with every other Saturday off. For this, she was paid $7 a week and was happy to receive that as other girls her age could not find employment. Mom referred to her pay as slave wages, but she insisted she was a high-class slave because she had a uniform of sorts to wear. The doctor’s wife happened to be a nurse, and she gave Mom her old nurse’s uniforms to wear while on the job. 

When Mom returned home after work from taking care of the doctor’s home, she did the same thing, helping out in her own mother and father’s household. If her parents were short of money, she often would buy the things the family needed but could not afford. That summed up my mom’s work ethic. She did this without complaining and without feeling that she was being shortchanged. When the doctor’s job disappeared, Mom found work as a clerk in her uncle’s neighborhood IGA food store. She ran the check out, stocked the shelves, and filled the phoned-in orders. She also had to take care of the exhaustive list of IOUs from customers that were always short of funds. That was the way business worked during the Depression. That sensitized her to the plight of those who could barely make ends meet. This was a quality that she carried to her grave. 

Dealing with the public during those times could not help but leave an indelible mark on her personality. Everyone was in the same boat, and that very leaky boat included her and her entire extended family. Lifelong friendships were formed in their shared misery. Neighbors took care of neighbors. She was a particularly great friend to all the neighborhood children who would come into the store with just a couple pennies they managed to scrape together to buy candy. They knew that she would always give them a little extra. That was one of Mom’s famous phrases. Her favorite anecdote was of a local boy who used to come into the store from time to time and say, Hey, Virginia, do you have something to wipe my nose?" She, of course, always found time to lend a handkerchief. He later went on to become a professional athlete in the National Football League, Earl Morrall. She always got a laugh out of telling that story to us about the big, tough, football quarterback. During his glory days with the Lions, Colts, and Dolphins, she often wondered if he ever remembered that lady who used to look out for him in Muskegon, Michigan. 

It is difficult for us to understand how growing up in the Great Depression impacted those people’s lives for the better and also for the worse. All those experiences touched my mother, and she either intentionally or unwittingly passed them on to her children. Kindness, sharing, empathy, and compassion—the traits that make for raising good people—were the lessons she learned in the streets. What a wonderful gift to possess and to share with others! As little as we kids had growing up in the much better times of the fifties, I still remember her returning from shopping with her hands behind her back asking us which hand we wanted to pick for a treat…be it a small toy or just a piece of candy. She had that unique ability to make each of us feel like we got the best one even if both treats were the same. The more important message we got was that we kids, always came first. We did not have much, but Mom found ways to make it seem like we were well-off. 

I once heard a comedian tell a story about how frugal his mother was as she could take worn-out bedsheets and make dish-drying towels out of them. When the towels got frayed, she would make dish-wash cloths out of them, and when the wash cloths got worn-out, she would cut them up into squares. When she got a big pile of these scraps, she would sew them into sheets. Hey, that wasn’t any joke. That was my mom! Millions of other moms from that generation did the same thing. When my mom bought anything new, it was usually marked Slightly Irregular. Slightly Irregular was code for it usually had something like three sleeves or a zipper that did not work. Not to worry though as Mom would either spend hours fixing it with her own sewing, or she would say that no one would ever notice such a small imperfection. Just look at how much they discounted the price! she would say. 

So it was that when you grew up with so little, you appreciated it all the more. When you had nothing, the small things took on added value. That was the essence of my mom. She often would stop whatever important task was at hand to go outdoors and look at the sunset. You got to see this sky, she would call Dad or us kids, and we would be forced to drop what we were doing to look at some truly magnificent array of purples, reds, and oranges. She would say that they were free to both the richest and the poorest people on this earth, and they were right outside your own backdoor. That seemed to give those sunsets an extra special value. 

On afternoons, she looked to the clouds to see what shapes they resembled. She seen patterns that even the most imaginative of us kids, could not see. On summer nights, she watched to see what the moon looked like. She sat for hours on the back porch, looking for patterns in the stars. How excited she was to witness a shooting star. When the first satellites were being launched in the 1960s, she led the family outside at night to check the sky for the passing of the Echo satellite. Can you imagine that, she would say, a man-made star going around the Earth and sending signals and taking pictures? For several weeks, we tracked that brightest star in the sky as it orbited around the Earth. In thinking back, I guess that was a pretty amazing sight! The biggest thrill of all was seeing the annual Northern Lights display. These were spooky sheets of pulsating white, red, and green lights that mysteriously illuminated the dark sky. What a great treat this was, and best of all it was free, she unfailingly noted. 

Every fall, she had Dad pile us kids in the car to do the annual color tour in the country just looking at the reds, yellows, and browns of the trees. God, how we kids used to dread this, but we always grudgingly admitted that it was pretty cool. These are the things we tend to take for granted, but they filled her with awe. Mother would often lie in the grass and search for four leaf clovers. I tried to do the same, but my attention span only lasted a few minutes before I gave it up as an impossible task. Mom usually seemed to find at least one. That also found a place of honor under the glass of the kitchen table. 

Mama could sit for an hour watching ants go about their work. Such was the fascination she found in even the smallest of creatures. It should come as no surprise that she loved all animals both large and small. Feeding the wild birds especially in the dead of winter was every bit as