The Elder Report: Memama's War on Christmas and What's That Buzzing Sound?

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I continue to spend the bulk of my weekdays caring for my Alzheimer's inflicted mother.  My dad remains in a local nursing home and probably will for the rest of his life.  My 91-year-old mother-in-law is weak and frail but still able to live at home with some assistance.  Since my last update things have mostly settled into a routine but we have some major recent exceptions.

My mother loves Easter.  For decades the “big” family gathering, one where literally everyone on both sides of the family showed up at once, was at my mom and dad's on Easter Sunday.  We had an egg hunt, of course, but also games like an egg toss, corn hole, and an adult hunt for the “prize egg” which contained ever how much cash could be raised from the crowd on the spot.  These were among my mom's most treasured times.

Christmas was also very special, of course.  But instead of the whole family getting together, everything was usually broken down into two or three separate gatherings, each with its own character.  Beginning a couple of years ago my mom, due to her slowly worsening condition, randomly started resisting her own Christmas decorations.  My sister would usually help her and dad set everything out, all arranged nicely with a nativity scene on the buffet, a small Christmas tree in the dining room, stockings for all the grandkids, a dancing Santa, a little garland, Christmas cards everywhere and assorted other knickknacks.  

But mom would not leave anything alone.  Starting the next day, weeks before the holiday, she was ready to put everything up and get out the Easter stuff.  My sister was discouraged by this.  It had taken so much time to get it all arranged.  And so began my mom's annual personal war on Christmas.

This year was no different.  I came in one Monday morning to find the small Christmas tree on the kitchen table.  My mom told me what a great Christmas she had and how she enjoyed seeing everybody but it was time to put it away.  This was the last week of November right after Thanksgiving.  I asked her what she thought the date might be.  “Honey I have no idea,” she responded.  “I haven't kept up with that since my working days.”  

I told her it was not ever December yet.  She laughed at me and inquired “what's that got to do with anything?!”  “Mom, Christmas hasn't happened yet.” “Oh.”  So I put the tree back.  Since then I have replaced the tree three times.  The stockings are all down.  Santa is off to the side of the tree.  I decided just to keep everything piled up in the dining room until we could possibly swoop in at the last moment and set it all out again.  

She doesn't like the Christmas wreath on the front door.  “I want you to find me a pretty one for the spring and the summer.”  “I'll do that memama, but Christmas has not happened yet.”  “It hasn't?!” She is always shocked to learn that Christmas still lies in the future.  She never thinks of it that way.  Jennifer came in the other day and questioned the pile of Christmas do-dads and my mom told her what a wonderful Christmas she had this year but now it was “time to put it all away.”

At least she can still appreciate my absurd religious humor.  I playfully accused her of liking when Jesus died better than when he was born.  She laughed hard.  "You never fail to make me laugh."  It did not matter that I said that.  She forgot it ten minutes later.  There are some advantages to this situation. But she still didn't like that little tree in the dining room.

Memama's war on Christmas continues with some new twist every week if not every day.  Sometimes it isn't even the Christmas stuff.  She put the blood pressure machine in a cabinet after it had sat where it was, with me occasionally using it, for six months.  She strikes randomly and it never makes any sense, so you have to be an investigator sometimes.  You definitely don't want her to get her own mail.  It will be scattered everywhere.  We all know we're fighting a losing battle.  The Easter bunny will doubtlessly be set out somewhere before New Year's day.  Until then, it's war.

Meanwhile, I am still caring for Jennifer's mom on Sunday afternoons.  A few weeks ago we were both reading (which is mostly what you do when you are around her), the house was quiet, when she suddenly asked: “Do you hear that?”  I listened.  I heard the clock and the refrigerator.  “That buzzing,” she offered as I listened intently.  I heard no buzzing.  I suggested it might be her hear aids but she insisted that she hears it with and without those.  She told me that Ivanette, her primary caregiver, says she can hear it.  Jennifer can't hear it.  No one else who is looking after her has heard it.  Jennifer's brother visited recently and he said he couldn't hear it either.

But she is a persistent believer that there is a strange buzzing inside her house.  She even called the exterminator service to check out the attic and all around.  Nothing.  Jennifer's brother tried to explain that bees and bugs are not active in the winter time.  It is too cold and they hibernate if there are any around.  She wouldn't have any of that.  There was a buzzing.  Not always but now and then and it was louder at night.  It was at a certain frequency and he, Jennifer, me, and everyone else simply could not hear the frequency that she and Ivanette were apparently tuned in to.  

I'm not convinced Ivanette really hears it.  She might just be placating her to keep the peace.  At any rate, after a few weeks of inquiries and consistent admissions that I'm sorry I just don't hear it, she does not bother to ask me (or Jennifer) any more.  I suppose she and Ivanette talk about what evil thing might lurk as the source of the mystery.  She's not the type of person that would simply let that go after becoming so heavily invested in the idea.  Other than that, she is doing fairly well, much better than my parents are faring, with her fairly sharp mind, though she is extremely fragile from her absolute refusal to put out any effort whatsoever to maintain her strength.  All she wants to do is read on her iPad with the font size set to billboard scale.

Dad has been through a gruesome experience recently.  He spend eight days in the local hospital fighting off two infections.  The whole experience completely drained him (and my sister who looks in on him as her job allows).  He is an emotionally resilient person.  He once told me that “some people think they can just quit when something bad happens.”  He despises that attitude.  But this hospital stay, in addition to months of not being “home”, of not being able to walk without great effort with a walker, caused him to reach the point where he no longer cared.  

“I'm not going to get stronger,” he said to my sister.  “I don't care if I can't get out of bed.”  But as of today he is going through a 21-day program of rehab back at the nursing home and he is putting forth good effort and is making progress.  I think he probably figured out he's never coming home.  This was the last straw in that illusion.  He cannot go to the bathroom without assistance and he is in a wheelchair most of the day, unable to get up out of it without assistance.  This is not how he wanted his life to turn out.  He wants to “work.”  He wants to just be on his farm, farming.  He got about 25 good years of that life when he could handle 120 acres.  Now its diapers and wheelchairs.
 

Recently, I was telling a friend that it doesn't bother me to see my dad this way.  Everything I just wrote does not get to me at all.  That is the way things will go and there's nothing much I can do about it.  Wu wei.  But, I told my friend, I miss his stories.  My dad always had a story to tell, usually funny, with humorous deeds performed by himself and his friends or coworkers.  He had a thousand knee-slapping funny stories.  That's all gone now.  He doesn't have the same energy as he did, that great spark in him was taken by his strokes.  No more stories and that is sad, living with just the memories.  But such is dying.  You fade into memory.

My mom's mind still fascinates me.  Lately, I've been teaching her how old she is.  That sounds pretty simple enough, right?  I noticed she had gotten into the habit of saying “you know how old I am” as she was explaining herself and I realized she was masking the fact that she has no idea how old she is.  So, the next time she said “you know how old I am” I interrupted her with “How old are you, memama?”  

At first she would reply “well, I was born in '37.”  “That doesn't tell me how old you are.”  “84.”  She would always say “84”, which I took to be the last time she actually knew how old she was.  My mom is 86 and physically very fit for her age.  She loves long walks and will do them in almost any weather conditions but she prefers when the sun is shining.  In the summertime with the heat it is always early in the morning.  Her country girl instincts are still functional.  

My mom loves to watch The Price Is Right which is now hosted by Drew Carey of all people.  I watch it with her most days.  So, I started treating her answer of “84” like a pricing game.  Higher.  Higher.  I would point with my finger upwards as I said this.  At first she wouldn't guess.  I could not get her to guess anything at all after “84.”  She was confused by her circumstances, trying to think of something to say, but not in an anxious way.  Just puzzled.  After a couple of days of this I finally got her to play along.  She would always answer “84” and we would play the pricing game up to “86.”  I would wait five minutes.  “Memama, how old are you?” “84.”

By the second week, she would not just answer “84” but started occasionally asking “I'm not 90 yet am I?”  “No ma'am.  You are 86.”  After three weeks of playing the pricing game with her age she will now say “86” every time.  Does she really know she is 86?  Maybe she just hears herself say “eighty” and “six” follows out of sheer rote.  But maybe there is more to it.  Because a few days after she started consistently answering “86” she started saying “I'm coming up on 87.”  

“Well, not yet memama.  Right now you're 86.”  

“I am 86.”  She slowly breaks out with a huge smile, her aged face aglow.  “Life is good.  Life is so good, even in your 80's.”