Tonight I flew back from Kansas City after visiting my mom for a few days in the small town of Oswego, in SE Kansas. I went with my sister, who is also my best friend, and we spent a few days visiting mom and taking her out to eat. We bought her a few things, took her to lunch, bought some flea market items, went to the grocery store, and generally hung around with her for some time this past weekend. The thing is, my mom has signs of dementia and short-term memory loss. No one is diagnosing Alzheimer's at this point; she knows the people in her life and also people in the family even if she rarely sees them. She knows my voice on the phone and always asks about my life in New York. She asks about her grandchildren, my teenage daughters, and my husband. She forgets that I call, and she does not usually know what day it is. She writes things down to remember them, but she doesn't always remember to look at the notes she makes.
I told my husband that if I have the gene in my DNA for whatever type of dementia is making my mom forget me as soon as I leave her presence, the day that I forget who he is or my daughters, he has my permission to smother me with a pillow. Since I don't want him to go to jail and he could never do that, I guess I'll have to live with the terrible forgetfulness if it happens to me.
I am sad that my mom probably won't remember that my sister and I visited her this week. I am sad that there may come a time when I go there and she doesn't know who I am. I am sad that we cannot have conversations that do not go around in circles and return to the first story in the loop as if we were replaying a cassette tape over and over.
I love my mom and want to be with her more. I live in New York, and she lives in Kansas. There is not much to do where she lives, and I cannot bring her here, out of her comfort zone, away from the town and people she knows. It's not that I need distractions or tourist attractions to keep me busy while I'm there; I can sit in my mom's room in the assisted living facility and listen and talk. After a while, though, there is only so much we have to talk about. I listen to her stories of her childhood and her mash-ups of current events that meld into one long story. I try not to cry.
