Today is my mother’s 85th birthday. It fills me not with happiness but with a profound sadness.
She doesn’t know it’s her birthday. She doesn’t even know she exists.
She has suffered from Alzheimer’s for 15 years, maybe more. The journey of how an intelligent, energetic, dominant woman has become an emaciated, pitiful figure in a hospital bed is a sorrowful one. Nor can I fully describe it even if I wanted to.
I can’t because I wasn’t there much. I’d been living overseas and so didn’t have to see the daily ravages upon my mother. It’s a disease that has been described as “the long goodbye”.
It seems that my siblings and I have been saying goodbye for a long time.
There’s no cure for Alzheimer’s. No medication to reverse it. The brain just slowly disappears.
Everything is unlearnt.
Forgetting her way home was a first indication. Many others followed, including paranoia, mood swings and being unaware of time.
The memory goes first, followed by the mental capacity. She clutched on tightly to the oldest memories but these too were soon whittled away, leaving only an empty shell. There followed the full deterioration of her physical capacities.
From a fiercely independent woman, she became totally dependent. She’s now taken care of 24 hours a day.
There are many stories like hers. Most of them hidden. Sad and untold.
Heart break and almost insurmountable difficulties are visited upon the affected families. These are stories of parental love and loss.
So today I’m not celebrating.
I’m just writing this to mark an unhappy birthday.
August 23, 2015 at 11:30 am
I cried reading this.
Anything about mothers, I’ll shed tears. Oh. Probably because I lost mine not so long ago. It was sudden. No sickness. No nothing. 😢
August 25, 2015 at 10:08 am
I’m sorry to hear that. Take care.
September 3, 2015 at 9:32 am
Hi there, I lost my mom in the beginning of the month of August 2015, and the date of her passing coincided with my birthday. So, no happy birthday for me too. My mom had been healthy until few years back when she suffered from lung infection. Thereafter she became not that healthy anymore, and then, recently, she decided to go! After her lung illness she became partially dependent (she could still walk, and we need to take care of her meals, we traveled with her and put her on a wheelchair). We could not go far or overseas as we needed to stay around for her needs. You can say that she depended on us. But after her passing, I realised that instead of saying that she relied on us, I have to say that she gave our lives a purpose, meaning, a love one to rush home for, after her passing, people told me that ok now I could go places that I like to go….yes true, but I feel emptiness in my heart, we rushed in and out for my mom, now there is nothing to rush about, we used to take leaves every 2 or 3 months to take her to the hospital for medical review and stayed at the waiting hall for half a day giving us chances to talk a great deal, and now we don’t have to do that anymore. To a certain extent she defined our existence, but she has gone, and my life has suddenly become, so called, meaningless. I may be able to pick up the touring bike to round the world but, there is no longer a person for me to call home for….it takes time to cope with the loss, I guess!!
March 6, 2016 at 2:49 am
Yes it does. So sorry to hear of the loss. But we carry on with life the best we can. Thanks for sharing.
September 3, 2015 at 9:33 am
Forgot to tell that my mom was 84