[rose of his heart]

"Rosie...are your boys with you?...because they're not with me...they were here, but now they're gone...they were sitting on the porch steps and now they're gone...they were just here...thank God you picked up...I decided that my first call would be to you and then I would search the woods...my next call would be to the police and...shouldn't I call them?"

Not surprised, and only slightly mystified at not being surprised, I answer gently and slowly and naturally, as if I had rehearsed for this moment all my life, "That would have been a good strategy, Mom, "except for the you-searching-the-woods-in-the-night part, had the boys actually been with you. But they're not. They're with me. They've been with me all day. The boys are right here, and they're fine. They're playing and talking about Christmas."

"Ooooh, I'm having one of those 'dreams' again, [meaning Lewy body hallucinations] aren't I?"

"Yes you are," I say calmly, "it is just a dream, Mama, it's just one of those dreams." The "just" is a lie, and I knew it. She knows it too but graciously overlooks it to spare my feelings. Or maybe the performance atones for the glitch in the script, like a bad poem slammed well. Nevertheless, the sound of my patient, reassuring voice, which sounds so much like hers, uttering words I must have heard a hundred times a hundred or so years ago, calms her. It calms us both.

As she expresses variations on the theme of relief punctuated by anxiety untainted by logic, the call catapults me back and down and into my childhood and then forward, skipping from memory to memory like stones across the river, landing mercifully on the Buddhist teachings. I redirect her with humor and we laugh of this and that.

After five or so minutes of something approximating normalcy, I inch my way back toward denial like a shy person inches toward their lover at an annoyingly loud and overcrowded party. Somehow, if only superficially, convinced that my gentle, rational words have healed her, I am unprepared when she says, "Well, thanks a lot, Rosie; I feel better now, knowing the boys are okay. But I had better go check on them." "Where, Mom?" "Upstairs. They've been asleep a long time..."

And, like the slap of the zen master during meditation, I realize that it is I who has been asleep--asleep to the truth that time stops for no woman, asleep to the fact of my specific mother's vulnerability, asleep to the reality behind the elegance of "the disease declaring itself." This is what it looks like / when neurons collide.

Tell me something, please.

[Bob Dawson]

[QUOTE=rose of his heart;

Tell me something, please.[/QUOTE]

I bow down to your spirit.

[RLSmi]

"...time stops for no woman..." (or man). Indeed!

[olsen]

I can tell you this makes my heart sad. and also glad your mom has a daughter who listens and explains, over and over again, and "redirects with humor".

[tulip girl]

....don't think of your mother as if at the edge of a mindless abyss for you are now the keeper of her memories - cherish them and her before they fade.....................

HUGS HUGS HUGS

TG

[rose of his heart]

Originally Posted by tulip girl

....don't think of your mother as if at the edge of a mindless abyss for you are now the keeper of her memories - cherish them and her before they fade.....................

HUGS HUGS HUGS

TG

Yes, and yet, I am an unreliable keeper of memories, even before cognition and memory deficits took up residence in my noggin'. Perhaps I/we/our memories are condemned--or perhaps challenged--to become like Tibetan sand painting, those mayflies of art that are born, live but briefly and are taken by the wind. Exquisitely taken, without struggle, without fanfare, without a trace.

[EmptyNest68]

Please don't condemn yourself. Denial is such a human response to such a progressive illness. While this was heart wrenching to a degree, there's also beauty in your prose. Thank you.

[clarkstar]

wow. what to do in this situation, i dunno.

i do know that my mother has been wearing a patch for the last month and it has changed her from not knowing what state she is in presently (arizona or michigan) to knowing the answer to almost all questions she is asked. i hope maybe there is something similar to help yours

[Bob Dawson]

[QUOTE -
poem by Rose of His Heart:

unreliable keeper of memories
Tibetan sand painting

mayflies
of art
born, live briefly
taken by the wind.

Exquisitely taken
without struggle
without fanfare
without a trace.

[/QUOTE]

------------------------------------------

[shakyjon]

Rose,
You handled that well. I know it has to be hard when your mother calls you with this. I couldn't even imagine having to do that. Hang in there.