A friend of mine told me about someone who had moved from California to Colorado in the last year but who had started getting paranoid and confused after the move. The person was 72 years of age. I immediately said to them, "That could be an early indicator of either senile dementia or Alzheimers."
I went on to recount my own sad story regarding my mother.
My older daughter (then 10 in 1999) and I and my mother all hopped on board a British Airways plane and flew to London and then to Edinburgh. My mother was sort of okay on this leg of the trip. But, still very whiny which was very unlike her old self that I had known the last 80 years. I think it started when she got embarrassed because she needed a seat belt extension because of her girth. Then she was whining about the time of the flight (11 hours) from San Francisco to London.
Previously, I had thought my 10 year old would be the difficult one. However, my 10 year old was so happy to be on this trip that she was great. It was my mother who was starting to be difficult as soon as she couldn't fit the normal seat belt of a plane without a seat belt extension.
When we arrived in London she was okay as I discovered Baguette's which are a kind of sideways grilled sandwich on a vertical clamp type of grill. Then we hopped on another plane to Edinburgh so I could show her and my daughter and myself (all three of us this was our first time in England and Scotland) where my mother's mother and father mostly grew up as children in the Glasgow area of Scotland. My grandmother in Clydebank and my grandfather in Ayre nearby.
We spent about 1 week in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aviemore in the Cairngorms (Scottish Highlands) and drove up as high as Loch Ness, Inverness and Findhorn on this our first trip to the area.
My daughter and I visited the local lakes around Aviemore which was very beautiful and we drove up to where people skied there then. Two years ago my wife and older daughter and younger daughter and my older daughter's boyfriend went to Aviemore too and rode the new Funicular railroad up to where people ski now where they have built a lodge at the top of the funicular. Even in October it was very cold at this altitude and stormy.
But, the real problem I had with my mother was when we got off the plane in Munich, Germany. First there were Germans and English attendants arguing with each other as we got off the plane which seemed very strange. But, since I didn't speak German (even though my background is Swiss from the 1700s and before) it felt kind of strange and my mother didn't want to be in Germany because of World War II and her friend Bruce who had been machine gunned in two at the Battle of the Bulge by the German Army. So, my mother became very very strange from here on in the trip. When we met my then 25 year old son and his 24 year old friend once we put her on the rental motorhome that slept 6 (there were 5 of us traveling in it) Mom refused to ever leave the motor home even once until we deboarded it for getting on a plane back to England and London. Then in London she wouldn't come out of the hotel room at all and do anything with us unless it was by car when we rented one to go to Glastonbury which was a really amazing experience for the 3 of us.
By the time we got back to San Francisco I was really really mad at my mother for acting so strangely and I didn't want to talk to her anymore for awhile for sort of making this trip so difficult for me in having to always go buy food for her and having to empty the toilet in the motorhome because she just wouldn't get out of the motorhome for over 1 week as we traveled from Germany, through Austria, Switzerland and northern Italy and then back to Munich to return the motorhome and fly back to England.
Back in England she also wouldn't come out of the room which at that time was a basement hotel room that had been temporary. When I wanted to change this room to a better one she didn't want to and instead spent all day and night watching English TV which is sort of like Watching Grass growing if you know what I mean.
So, even in England most of the time we had to buy food and bring it to her because she wouldn't leave the room.
It wasn't until about 1 year later that I realized she was entering the first phase of Senile dementia. At this point I felt really bad about being so angry with her because I didn't understand her descent into madness wasn't a conscious thing but a medical condition instead. (Because Senile dementia and Alzheimers are both eventually fatal non-recoverable diseases).
At this point the most difficult decisions of my life I had to make. When she almost burned down her place (and everyone nearby) by setting a plastic tupperware bowl on her hot electric stove and then sitting at the kitchen table and praying for 24 hours that the fire wouldn't get any bigger than it did. Luckily for us all the fire burned itself out without causing much damage as she prayed. She also left on the electric burner for almost 24 hours too.
We had told her only to use the microwave and to never use the stove but she hadn't listened to us.
At this point because of liability we really had no choice but to put my mother into the best senile dementia and Alzheimers care facility in our county in California. From this point I watched my mother slowly devolve from 2001 in December to 2008 when she finally went into a coma with a death rattle and maybe a month later she died still in the coma with a death rattle.
One year later my son could actually finally deal with her death and the family rented a beautiful yacht and put her ashes in the ocean where John Denver Crashed his plane and died because she loved John Denver's music. Until then I kept her ashes on my grand piano in a blue velvet bag and often sang to her as I played the piano during that year.
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