This year's critter

Sitting on a bench in a visiting area this afternoon, May looks straight ahead and says, "This is this year's colander...no...not that... Critter! This is this year's critter. They've all come out. They're all..." (and here she reaches out with her hands and shakes them back and forth).

"Are you describing something you're seeing?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Right there." She points toward a short table about three feet in front of us. It's surface is made of thin slats with half-inch gaps between them. A potted poinsettia occupies the far end of the table.

"Show me," I say.

She walks to the table and, again waving her hands around, roughs out a shape about the size of a large cat in the space opposite the poinsettia, then sits back down beside me.

"That's this year's critter?" I ask.

"Yes."

Activities room

They were getting ready to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" when I showed up this morning. Max, the activities director, had distributed porcelain bells to a favored few, and I was happy to see that May was one of them. She was poised, bell at the ready, but suddenly everyone was calling her name and pointing toward me. She looked up and smiled, and searched for someone to take her bell.

We sat on the bench outside the activities room and she asked me what I had been doing.

A little hope

Looked in May's closet this afternoon and there were no clothes. Looked in all the drawers of her dresser--nothing there. Asked a staff person and she said all May's stuff was hanging in the laundry room. They keep it there now, because she was putting clothes on and off all day. Seen that, I said.

She'd wear three pairs of panties, two pairs of pants -- often with the shorter pair on top so you could see all four cuffs -- and usually three sweaters one on top of the other. They said they'd put her in her pajamas at night, and she'd take them off and sleep in a pair of slacks. Yeah, did that at home, every night. But they've put a stop to all that by taking the clothes away. Said she's more settled now, not nearly as restless. And she was. I'd already noticed it. "Settled" was a good choice of words. She smiled. Seemed relaxed. Very nice visit.

Stopped at the nurse's station on my way out and commented on the change. They said it's been like that for a few days now. Said they had changed the time of day they were administering some of her meds, thought it had "evened her out."

So they're doing something. Thinking about the things she does, and how they can change them. Getting her settled, evening her out. Day after tomorrow it'll be six weeks. There's an adjustment period, they said. Right, of course. Six weeks sounds about right. A little hope, for the first time in a long, long time.

Thanksgiving at the movies

Who goes to movies at noon on Thanksgiving Day, you may be wondering. Dads with kids with instructions to stay out of the house until the cooking is done. College-age cousins trying to delay the inevitable. Pairs of women without families who planned to meet here because, well, you know... But only one dementia couple, if our experience was statistically valid.

She thought the parking lot was "spooky." She recoiled just inside the doors, because the entrance was too cavernous. She was hungry so I bought the large bag of popcorn, but then she didn't eat any. When I asked her why, she said she forgot and took a handful. But then she forgot again.

She slept through 20 minutes of commercials and coming attractions, and when they ended she woke up and said, "Let's go home!" I told her the movie hadn't started yet and she said, "Oh." When it did start, she gave it about 10 minutes and then whispered, "I don't like this movie." So we walked out. I asked her if she needed to go to the bathroom and she said yes. I escorted her to the door of the women's room and watched her disappear through it. Then I worried that there might be another way out on the other side, so I walked into the men's room and saw that it was a small facility with only one way in or out. Even so, over on her side, she was unsure of what to do. I heard a toilet flush and then her voice saying, "Bill?" I answered her and was heading in, but she walked toward the sound of my voice and met me halfway.

The only other thing open was McDonald's, so we went there. I bought two McFlurries. Hers made her shiver, even though she was wearing two sweaters and a heavy coat. I bought her some coffee to warm her up, but she only took a sip or two. She asked to change tables, away from the cold window. I found a spot across from the fake fireplace. We sat down and I continued with my McFlurry, but she wasn't drinking her coffee. She said, "Let's go home."

In the car I explained that we weren't going home; we were going back to her room where she was staying now. She said okay. We drove on in silence. I took her in, punched in the security code, walked her to her room, took off her coat, hung it up, and got ready to tell her goodbye. She said, "Will you come see me sometime?" I'd heard those very same words, spoken in exactly the same way, from three-year-old Kevin, 36 years ago, the first time we left him with a babysitter -- he thought his mother and I were never coming back.

I told her I DO come back, every other day. "I was here Friday, and Sunday, and Tuesday, and today is Thursday, and I'll be back on Saturday." "You do?" she said. I left her with a staff person and walked with a steady gait down the long corridor. At the end I turned and looked back. She was standing where I left her, looking. I waved and she waved. I'll be back tomorrow.

Holiday plans

Tomorrow it will be four weeks since I took May to live in the residential living alternative for individuals with Alzheimer's disease and other types of memory impairments. It will also be Thanksgiving Day. I am going to pick her up at the residential living alternative and take her to a movie. It can't be a noisy film, or a violent one, or a chaotic one, or a jarringly visual one, or one in which there's a terminal illness. Ice cream at the snack bar would be a good thing. A friendly ticket-taker with no exaggerated mannerisms. A row of seats all to ourselves. A restroom with only one way in and out. The less said about the holiday, the better. Thankful is not where she's at right now.

It's time...

An email I sent to Annie a few minutes ago:

Subject: Mom

Just now, she came to me at my desk, walking slow and talking soft and sad. She said, "I don't think I can take care of myself anymore." I said we would get her some help and she said okay. I told her to try to make it through today, and we would work on this tomorrow. And she said okay.

Tomorrow we are taking her to live at an assisted living facility. We made that decision ten days ago.

How the work gets done

I mowed the lawn today and May showed up right behind me with the rake. When we finished, she asked what to do with all the piles of grass clippings she had made. I told her I would bring the yard waste sack. I walked the mower back to the garage and was surprised to find her right behind me, in the garage I had recently swept clean, holding a rake-load of fresh green grass that was falling between the tines at a distressing rate. "Get out of this garage with that," I shouted. "Out, out out!" I grabbed the yard waste sack, carried it to the back yard, and showed her how to put the grass in it. Then I went to the front yard to clip around the tree. She showed up a few minutes later, empty-handed. "Where's your rake?" I asked. She didn't know. I told her to go look for it in the back yard and bring it around to the front. She showed up with a shovel and asked me if we should dig up the whole flower bed, or just a little bit. I told her we were raking the yard, but we needed the rake. She left again and came back with the hose, adjusting the nozzle as she got closer to me. "No, no, no, not the hose. Bring the... No, wait, put down the hose and stand right where you are." I walked around the house and brought back the rake. She raked all the clippings onto the sidewalk, which would now have to be swept after we put the larger pieces in the sack.

This is how we do everything.