My mother, soon to be 93, and living with Alzheimer’s disease, can still surprise me, and I want to share with everyone a story about her reaction to my memoir, My Mom Inez: Our Alzheimer’s Journey.

My book was self-published late last year at a time when Mother had not been recognizing me as her son. Most of the time she seemed to know that I was someone familiar, and she was always glad to see me; at other times she thought I was her father. Then she’d nearly always ask me how
her mom was getting along. I’d always say she was doing well.

Because of her confusion, I wasn’t sure what to say when I gave her my Christmas gifts, one of which was an autographed copy of the book. I had inscribed it with “To my Mom Inez, with
love, your son, Bob.”

Since she didn’t recognize me as her son, I told her that her son, Bob, had been called out of town on business and that before he left he asked me to deliver his gifts for her, including a copy of the book he had written about her and their family. I told her he would come to see her as soon as he returned. She was pleased with her gifts and said she looked forward to seeing Bob again.

She showed little interest in the book, except to look at the dust jacket, both front and back, and then, at my urging, to read the inscription. Then she put it aside and looked at her other gifts.
Until last week I wasn’t sure she had ever looked at the book again.

This week the nurse in charge of the nursing home unit in which Mom has lived since July 2007 told me that she had talked to Mom about the book.

Their conversation took place in Mom’s room where one afternoon the nurse found Mom sitting in her wheelchair with the book open on her lap. She appeared to be reading it, using her fingers to trace along the lines as she read.

“What are you reading?” the nurse asked.

Mom looked up at her, smiling broadly. “My son Bob wrote this book and he must have left it here for me. It’s really good. He talks about Dad, Mom and our family. I like it.”

Looking at the page she was on, the nurse noticed it was a section about Mom. “She didn’t seem to make the connection with herself,” the nurse said. “What she connected with were the parts about other members of her family.”

“Seeing her read your book with so much pleasure gave me goose bumps,” she said, rubbing her arm.

She had given me goose bumps too, and I thanked her for telling me about it. Mother’s cognition changes from week to week, day to day, and occasionally hour to hour; sometimes now she knows me and sometimes she doesn’t, and that doesn’t matter to me.

The nurse told me Mom spent two hours with the book that afternoon, and said she loved it.

That does matter to me.