thanks for sharing, o. i am really sorry for you and your mom, for both of your pain and your suffering.

i'm just curious, why do you think your mother's memory was so elusive when so many other memories from your child were vivid?

my grandfather had a stroke when i was 14, and ended up living another 10 years though he was never the same. his memory was weak and kept getting weaker through the years. he was one of the most special people in my life and it was very tough for me to have him only vaguely recognize me or not remember my name.

By the time he passed, it was very tough for me to remember how he was pre-stroke. while there were certainly pieces of his personality in the post-stroke grandfather, the man i really wanted to remember was the one who handed me twenties when my grandma wasn't looking, bought me my first Playboy, who talked for hours about the Cardinals baseball team, who loved to come over and listen to our kenny rogers album (and the gambler in particular), who always wore cool brimmed hats, who smelled like the oddly pleasant combination of must and stale cigar smoke, who had the sweetest laugh you ever heard and who made it clear always that his grandchildren were the lights of his life.

So I can only begin to imagine the pain of losing of losing a mother to alzheimer's, esp. at such a young age. it strikes me as totally unfair. I've written about the seeming fallacy of increased wisdom being the one thing that we're supposed to enjoy as we get older, but accumulating memories are another one of the rare sweetnesses of aging, yet they too often elude us when we can most use them.

Orlando, bless you.  In about 10 days I am moving home to the farm to help my parents.  I will be there through to the end.  The farm land is leased but there is so much just around the barns.  My dad is going down physically really fast and he has always been so strong. My mom needs help because he can do so little,  It is hard enough with the physical deterioration, My heart goes out to you and djamo with the your parents having alzheimer's.   

I lost my dad to brain cancer a couple of years ago.  The worst part was watching him deteriorate mentally.  Especially towards the end, he seemed less and less himself until I felt as if I could scarcely recognize any real part of the man that I had known as my father.  Then there would be moments where he would suddenly resurface, usually with a witty comment and a wry grin that let me know that some part of him was still in there somewhere.  Then he would be gone again.

For a while after he died, I would dream about him.  I kept a journal of the dreams because I didn't want to forget them.  In one of the early dreams he collapsed on the floor and then grew younger as he lay there smiling at me, all of the age that the cancer had visited upon his face disappearing before my eyes.  He became like I remembered him when I was a boy, his hair and beard dark and full.

The last dream I had of him was the most vivid dream I've ever had.  In the dream, I was at a small airport in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.  There was a tiny, dark bar there that was filled with old men.  I walked up to the bar and spoke with one of the men for a few moments.  Then my father walked in.  He stood next to me smiling.  I placed my hand on his shoulder to see if he felt real.  He did.  He began to speak, but no sound came out of his mouth.  I began to panic because I desperately wanted to hear his words.  I couldn't.  The panic woke me up.

He lived less than a year after diagnosis, which is not uncommon for the illness from which he suffered.  I can only imagine what it must be like to go through that for the better part of two decades.

I can still remember him.  I'm glad you can remember, too.