Face-to-face with reality

On Wednesday we began a once-a-week-for-12-weeks series of support group meetings. In the car on the way home May asked, "What do we do now?" I told her we're doing it--what we do now is go to these meetings every Wednesday; we're already taking the two approved drugs, and now we're in a support group." This brought her face-to-face with reality, and she cried on and off the rest of the day. She has known, of course, since mid-November that she has Alzheimer's; but the knowledge comes and goes, and I think gets blocked a lot too. 

On Thursday she didn't want me out of her sight. I had a 4 o'clock meeting, which wasn't too bad. But I was concerned that I was supposed to be in Chicago all day Friday. I told her I could take her to the Friday meeting and she could sit in the back of the office and read; she eagerly said yes.

We took the commuter train into the city Friday morning, which she described as "an adventure." It's a 20-minute walk from the train station to my client's office, which she greatly enjoyed. In the office, everyone went out of their way to make her feel welcome. She spent the morning copying phone numbers and addresses from one book into another. She spent the afternoon reading. Whenever I checked on her she said what a great place it was to spend the day, and how glad she was to be out of the house. The trip home was another treat for her, just riding the train looking at the houses passing by. 

We were both tired when we got home and we lay down on the bed, with the TV on for the news. She stayed only a few minutes and then said she couldn't rest with the TV on and was going downstairs. I fell asleep and woke up an hour later with her sitting on the bed crying. "Do you just want me to go away?" she said. I asked her what she was talking about and she said, "I think you don't want me around your friends." I told her she had just spent the day with my friends and everyone had a great time. She said she didn't know what she meant. 

She asked what was next for us and I gave her the same answer I gave on Wednesday. Finally she said, "So, do I have Alzheimer's?" I said yes, and she cried pretty hard. She eventually calmed down and asked me if I believed in God, and would I look for her when my time came. I told her I was 62 years old -- I might get there before she does. She asked me if I would stay here when she was gone and I said yes. She asked me how long she had. I told her no one, so far, would hazard a guess, but I thought she had another thousand days here in this house--and it would be a shame to spend those thousand days worrying about what came after that. She agreed, but we both know that when she was a little girl, she would start crying when her grandparents came to visit because she knew they were going to leave again. She went to sleep saying, I just want to watch those little boys grow up...we just have the two, right?" I said yes, just the two grandchildren.

An odd thing...

As I was gathering up my stuff to leave my client's office yesterday, May said, "But you haven't got your hair cut yet." I told her I wasn't going to get my hair cut; we were going to catch the 4:30 train. On the train, she studied the side of my head and said, "Did you get your hair cut?" I said no and she said, "Well I wondered, it doesn't look very short." Then last night, before I went to bed for real, she was staring at me from across the bedroom. "Did you get your hair cut today?" she asked. I said no, I didn't. This morning, as I sat on the other end of the couch from her, she stopped reading the paper and said, "Did you get your hair cut yesterday?" I'm used to getting the same questions over and over, and I just answer them as if for the first time as long as I can stand it. But this haircut question was making me self-conscious. Was there something wrong with my hair? So this time I asked why she kept asking me that and she said she didn't know. That of course reminded her that her brain wasn't working right, and she had a weeping spell. She's asleep now.