“Wee!” my mother says as she steers the electric shopping cart down the aisle of Home Depot in Mission Viejo. Panic fills my heart as mom narrowly misses two burley contractors and a woman heading for the flower department. I wonder who will be sued, my mother or me, if she crashes into them. Yet, I don’t want to stop her. She’s having too much fun. This is not my fault, but Home Depot’s, for offering motorized vehicles to people without a driver’s license. My mother hasn’t driven a car in three years, so this bit of motorized freedom must be heaven for her.
“Mom, should you slow down?” I shout as I trot along behind her. Instead of stopping, she laughs. I cringe when she brushes against a display. A few boxes hit the floor. I’m afraid to stop to pick them up and lose mom in this monstrosity of a store. My mother got away from me in a grocery store last week and I spent 15 minutes trying to find her. It’s amazing how a 90-year-old can move so fast while in a shopping frenzy. Every so often, as she passes by the flowers, she throws another potted something into her cart. Watching her hit the basket is like watching a Laker game.
After my father died, becoming my mother’s caregiver terrified me. I was the best choice of mom’s three daughters to help her, ironic because I didn’t want to have children. I liked my freedom. However, my mother, gave up so much for me. Caring for her was what I needed to do for such an amazing woman.
Before mother arrived from Delaware where she lived for 40 years, Lisa Jenkins Wright from Orange County Counsel on Aging gave me names of senior centers and adult day care organizations. She also provided a book of resources prepared by the Orange County Council on Aging. I was still concerned with how to care for my mom who suffered from dementia. Caregiving was much more difficult than my day job, running a cemetery/mortuary business with 90 employees.
When Mom first arrived in January of 2015, she could not make meals for herself while I was at work. She’d forget to eat. When I got home from work, I’d ask if she had lunch. She couldn’t remember. When I tried to hire a person to be at the house for a few hours, my mother got angry with me.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” she said.
I had to find a way for her to accept an assistant. I resorted to the selfish mode, a well-known personality trait of mine.
“Mom, this person is for me, not you. Someone needs to help clean the house.” I avoided mom’s bright blue eyes while I spoke. “Whoever comes can make lunch for you or take you to the store.”
Mom acquiesced and soon became adjusted to the gentle caring ladies from Seniors Helping Seniors, one of the many organizations helping families keep loved ones at home.
As my mother’s primary caregiver, my job was to keep my mother laughing and having fun, which wasn’t always easy. We went out to dinner a couple times a week. Mother enjoyed a chance to get out of the house and meet other people. However, my mother’s dementia kept me on my toes. There were many challenges, including what mother might say when we went out. We adjusted her response to seeing someone slightly overweight from loudly proclaiming “my that person is fat” to a much milder comment of “oh my.”
A few weeks before the Home Depot excursion, we sat next to a nice couple in Famous Dave’s, a rib joint in Irvine. Because of the table set up, we were close to our fellow diners. A couple next to us had wrinkles and grey hair, which may have enabled them to have compassion for the elderly.
“You look like you are having a good time,” the man started up a conversation with mom.
“This is quite a lively place,” my mother responded. The couple bantered back and forth with mother. They had a great sense of humor and mom was on her game. She was having a blast. I am doing a good job, I thought, patting myself on the back, until my mother, the jokester, got out of control. The waitress sat water glasses down in front of us along with a few straws.
“Say, do you know how to get the paper off the straw?” Mother tore off the top of the paper encasing the straw and scrunched the paper to the bottom of the straw. With a quick puff, she shot the paper so that it hit my nose. We all laughed and my mother was pleased with the response. Dementia along with her vodka tonic blurred the boundaries between acceptable behavior and that which is not. I watched mom as she sucked water into the straw and slowly lift the straw out of the glass. She looked at me, then aimed the straw at the man sitting next to her.
“Mom, no, don’t do that,” I whispered, hoping the couple couldn’t hear.
My mother would soon douse this nice man with a straw full of water. I had to stop her. I placed my hand gently on her arm and repeated, “Mom please.”
She looked disappointed, then forgot her brief indiscretion and put the straw back in the glass. She laughed at something the man said. Right then, the waitress set a glass of wine in front of me. I resisted the temptation to toss down the entire contents. I had to stay alert for what my mother might try next.
When I think of the challenges of caring for my mother, I still struggle to avoid tears. There are so few resources for helping to care for our senior citizens. Because every situation is so different, caregivers struggle with how to solve the next problem that comes along. According to Alzheimer’s Orange County, there are more than 84,000 people in Orange County suffering from some form of dementia. Of those, 75% are living at home with family members.
Fortunately, time with Alzheimer’s Orange County taught me what to say most of the time to retain my mother’s dignity. I never told my mother that she asked the same question nine times. I always answered like she’d never asked the question before. When she said something nasty, I ignored her comment. My mother had never been nasty. The dementia changed her demeaner and allowed a child’s response to something that bothered her.
My mother died at the age of 92. But I am glad I had the chance to make her laugh and to give her the opportunity for mischief after dad’s death. The last three months for my mother, as she went through the dying process, was difficult beyond imagining. At her funeral, the picture of mother at Home Depot driving the shopping cart reminded me that we had many good times together in her last two years. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad caregiver after all.
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