My mother is closer to the dead than to the living.

            They populate her days, a ceaseless parade of faces from the past:  parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, friends, grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.  Their names slip from the increasing ruin of her mind and seep through the chinks like water, passing between her fingers like prayer beads.

            Dementia has made every moment of her life simultaneous.  All time is Now.  Events from childhood link arms with those of the present day.  Unable to differentiate, she experiences them all at once, keeping company with both the dead grandchild she adored and the grandmother she despised.

            Her mind is rainforest dense, as unstable as the slopes of Everest.  We who love her search for her through the dripping wet and snowy caves, but the hard truth is that the woman we knew as ‘Mom’ is already gone.  The occasions when she is truly present are increasingly rare – a glimpse of exotic plumage, the track of the Yeti.

            She hasn’t forgotten us entirely (although we walk with the dead now, too), but that time is fast approaching.  Last week, my sisters and I were “You, her, and the other one.”  When I bathe her, she asks, “Do you have a lot of patients?”  And I’ve witnessed the momentary blankness that often descends when she looks at my father.  Sixty years married, three children, ten grandchildren, six great-grandchildren…and she wonders, “Who is this man?”

            My father, seeing that confusion, turns away and focuses on the television, marshalling his emotions so as not to cry in front of her.  He’s done better with all of this than I had expected – keeping in mind that ‘better’ is another word for pushing through the days by staring straight ahead so you don’t go insane with grief.

            Some days are better than others, but it’s a losing battle.  We’re each of us vulnerable, touched to one degree or another by the frustration and sorrow.  Despite our best intentions, emotions flare unexpectedly.  Like bulls driven mad with pain, intent only upon what WE feel, we gore each other, heedless of the damage we do not just to ourselves and to the future of our family once she is gone.

            There’s no how-to manual for this, despite those who have gone before us, shedding light on the path.  All advice is subjective, each circumstance its own particular Hell.  We knew we would cry (of course we would cry), but no one warned us about HER tears, those moments of terror and despair when she curls into a ball and sobs like a broken-hearted child, abandoned in the deepening well of her own brain.  “Where am I?” she asks of the house where she’s lived for over twenty years.  “Why can’t I go home?  I want to go home!”  She nails herself upon a cross built of insecurities – “I was a terrible mother.  I didn’t mean to make mistakes.”

            Now we do as she once did for us – we hold and rock her, quiet her tears and terror, try to explain what we can (knowing full well she won’t remember any of it two minutes down the line), and work to make her smile, make her laugh.  We tell her we love her, we forgive her, and that she’s perfect just the way she is.  “No, I’m not,” she declares, face wet with tears.  She looks at each of us in turn, her daughters.  “But you are.”  Oh, God, if only that were so, Momma.

But…

No one told us about the upside that may come with Alzheimer’s, the unexpected blessings that open suddenly in our hands like a pearly lotus and leave us breathless with surprise and gratitude.

My mother spent her life as a rock, holding every hurt and anger tight against her heart for no one to see.  Alzheimer’s has unlocked that gate and set her free.  She cries easily, but those tears are a gift.  No longer alone with her pain, she has others to share the burden and to take it from her shoulders.  She laughs with us (boy, does she!) and makes jokes.  She teases as she never did before (but gently now, always gently) and if she doesn’t always remember the name of the person she’s poking fun at, who cares?

But the biggest gift, the unexpected prize at the heart of all this sadness, has been the renewal of her relationship with my father.  Both children of the depression, both raised in neglectful, sometimes abusive families, they are tough nuts to crack.  Both are intensely private individuals and neither has ever been prone to outward displays of affection.  Now all bets are off.  Every night before bed, my father kisses my mother goodnight.  (In 53 years of life, I have seen them kiss only a handful of times.)  They are solicitous of one another in ways they never were before; respectful, gentle, thoughtful and caring.

It’s a wonder to behold.  And if it had to come about in this way – if we had to walk the jungle trail of dementia in order to see this miracle occur – then I’m all for it.  My parents have their love back.

And I thank God.