Mom's Christmas Shopping

Comically sad essay about an adult daughter and mother with Alzheimer's Disease.

Mom's Christmas Shopping

She sits in the same drab, dark living room, trimmed with dirty hand smudges, in the same spot on the dull brown worn out sofa, that she has sat in for the last 35 years. She works diligently on what seems like the same crossword puzzle that she has worked on again and again. She lives the same routine, the one that she established long ago, every single day of her life. But these things that she does – now – she does because of her body memory; they are all she remembers. She no longer does them consciously, they are no longer her choice. Her mind and her will, along with her body, is shrinking by the day.

It is important that I now memorialize everything and anything that she says, before, like Dad, she can no longer say it. Funny, it never occurred to me, before, to do so. I never purposefully looked forward to the day that my mother – in fact both my parents – would no longer be able to speak their own minds to me, tell me what they need, what they want, what hurts them, what gives them joy. I always took for granted that they were the ones to do those things for me, not vice-versa, and I certainly never imagined that I would be listening for the emotional nuances of the sounds and gestures they make to try to decipher what they might be trying to communicate to me.

It is the day after Christmas, 2004, very early in the morning. I sit, across from that same sofa, trying to assimilate all that has happened, all that is happening, all that will happen to me, to them, to us. I hadn’t realized how much she had deteriorated; maybe I didn’t want to see. The question from her last night and the crafty way that she has learned of trying to hide the atrophy of her brain, echoes in mine. My own brain turns it around and around, trying to see it more clearly, to define it. But I can’t. I have to simply accept it. And, in doing so, I have to switch body parts; I have to step out of my brain and into my heart. That is the only way that I am going to be able to withstand my parents’ day-to-day decline.

The question was a simple one, as were the follow-up questions from me, along with her answers. And, strangely enough (this is where her craft comes in), her answers seem ordinary enough: the same kinds of answers that anyone who is not paying particular attention to the subject of the question might give. But, I know now – after only five days of living in their home with them – that Mom no longer pays close attention to anything, that she can’t see in front of her. I know that she realizes that she is losing function, but I don’t know how much she realizes. I don’t want to ask her. She reverts from time-to-time to a small child, crying when I say something that she feels hurts her feelings. Unfortunately, Dad understands how bad she has gotten, but he, too, is withering and thus is unable to comfort her. It falls to me. I will take up the challenge, willingly, lovingly. For as long as it is necessary, or, perhaps (I wish I knew my own strength), for only as long as I can bear it.

She asks: “Honey, is there anything in there to make a sandwich with?” Looking at this simple question through a lens that I use all day every day, it appears quite benign. It’s just the circumstances, I guess, that make it so bizarre. It is 3:30 in the morning when she asks the question. Oh, and she is standing in the kitchen naked, banging two glasses together. The clink and clank of them has awakened me.

“Sure, Mom. Why don’t you go get your nightgown back on and I’ll make you a sandwich,” I respond, as though the situation I find her in is the most natural (no pun intended) in the world.

“Okay, honey.” She goes. I follow, to make sure that it is her bedroom into which she walks, and that she will put her clothes back on. I don’t want her to get cold.

“Mom, do you want peanut butter and jelly, or lunchmeat?” I ask.

“Whatever you think, honey.”

“Lunchmeat, okay?” says I.

“Sure, honey,” she answers.

“You want mustard, mayo, both, or neither?” I ask.

“Um…,” she stammers. “Uhhh…,” she stares. “Surprise me,” she finally decides.

But she didn’t decide. She can’t remember what those things are. But she is getting really good at not letting on. I finish assembling the sandwich, add a few chips and a glass of milk and take it to her. She sits, now, at her place on the sofa. She accepts the offering gratefully and expresses the same kind of joy at receiving the plate, that my five year old granddaughter, Brooklen, showed earlier yesterday morning when opening her slew of gifts from Santa. She eats as though it is the only food that she has had for days and the only food she will ever eat again. There is no finesse in this. She takes huge bites of the sandwich, slurps the milk – dribbling some of it out of the corner of her mouth and down her chin – and doesn’t notice that half of the corn chips she is trying to shove into the mix end up on her lap, on the sofa, or on the floor.

“Is there any candy, honey?” she asks, with the last bite of her sandwich falling from her mouth.

“Let me check, Mom.” I am quickly trying to decide whether or not to give my mother some candy. She really wants it. She has a sweet tooth. But it is four o’clock in the morning and just like Brooklen, sugar makes her hyper and she will probably be up for hours if I let her have it.

But, what the hell, I’m a writer. It doesn’t really matter what time I write, or what time I sleep, so I decide to take the same tactic that I did when my children were babies: I try to sleep when they sleep. Of course, every mother knows the basic problem with this method of adjusting our biorhythms to that of our young. If we do sleep when they sleep, and we give them the attention that they demand when they are awake, there is no time for anything else. If we want to accomplish anything besides attending to their needs, we must steal time from our slumber, because it is simply not possible to steal it from them. Theirs is not a subtle, do-it-if-and-when-you-feel-like-it sort of need. You simply cannot ignore a screaming baby. Or a naked woman in the kitchen in the middle of the night bashing two glasses together and asking for a sandwich. Well, at least I can’t.

Because I have a busy day ahead of me and there will be no possibility of me sleeping when she sleeps this day (I have to finish packing up all my things at my apartment so that the movers can bring it all over here tomorrow), I change my mind about giving her the candy and try to change the subject. I tell her that I changed her sheets today and they smell nice and sweet. That they are calling her name. It works. She asks to go to bed.

So, it is 5:30 and she is asleep again. But I hear my Dad moaning and squirming in his bed in the back room (the “rec room” turned quasi-hospital room) and know that he will be awake in about another half hour. I, of course, am now too wired up to go back to sleep, so I sit with a pen and paper, trying to remember all of the things that I have to do today: cancel my phone service at my apartment, call the cable company and schedule the setup of my wireless computer connection, go to store and pick up some diapers for Dad, Mom’s prescriptions, and oh, yeah…vaccum the chips off the floor. I glance over at her spot. My mother’s comments of the last few days swirl around me, yesterday’s “conversations” with her return to the forefront of my mind.

“Oh, my gosh,” she would say, placing her hand over her mouth in surprise, “I don’t think I’ve done any Christmas shopping for anyone!” She says this as she looks at their Christmas tree – the same scrawny artificial tree that they have put up year after year after year. There is nothing under the tree. I’ve been so busy packing and such, and preparing for Christmas myself, shopping for my kids and grandkids, attending required holiday functions, breaking in and training a new nurse (who speaks no English) for my parents – that it never even dawned on me that Mom and Dad might notice, or care, that there were no gifts under the tree. To tell the truth, I wasn’t even sure that Mom noticed the tree in the living room.

“It’s okay, Mom. We’re not doing the gift exchange anymore, remember?” Of course she doesn’t remember.

“We’re just letting the kids open a couple of their gifts, and doing the potluck dinner that we always do. We might take the kids caroling for a little while, too. So, don’t worry. Nobody has gotten any gifts for anyone else, Mom. There are just too many of us now.”

“Oh, that’s right. I remember now,” she says. No, she doesn’t. When my sister walks in the door – the one that Mom and Dad have seen every single day of their lives for the last five years or so because she lives on the next block, the one who began this daily visitation right after Dad had his stroke, the one who has a fifteen year old daughter – Mom asks: “Hi, honey, where’s that girl? The one who has the little baby?”

“You mean my daughter, Mom? Agnese?” my sister replies.

“Yeah…the one with the little baby,” repeats our mom.

“Mom, Agnese doesn’t have a baby. She’s only fifteen. Mary’s daughter, Laura, has a daughter, Brooklen – remember? But she’s not a baby anymore. She’s five now.”

“Brooklen? That’s a funny name. Who would name their child “Brooklen?” Mom asks – for the eighty-four thousandth time. “Why would anyone name their child after a bridge? Especially a bridge in New York! That’s an awful place!”

My sister would wrap up this part of the dialogue with Mom by changing the subject. Did you have dinner yet, Mom? I don’t know, honey. Did you have a shower today, Mom? I don’t know, honey. How’s Dad feeling today, Mom? Oh? Is Dad here? I thought he was at work, Mom would say. This is not working, my sister thinks (I know this because I do the same thing.) Talk about what is concrete. Talk about what is right in front of her. What puzzle are you working on, Mom? A “place name” puzzle. That’s better. Now she’s on it. Amazing that she can sit and work out a difficult and intricate crossword puzzle, but can’t remember that she and our dad have been retired for nearly forty years. “What is a five-letter word for ‘the potato state,” honey?” she asks, trying to let us feel smart like she did when we were young.

“Why aren’t there any presents under the tree?” she asked me over and over, since I came in the door five days ago, replacing my brother and his wife who just simply couldn’t stand it here one more day. Who planned to leave in an orderly fashion, giving me time to finish my final exams at school, get through Christmas, and give thirty days’ notice to my landlord. “I’m gonna blow my brains out if I have to stay here one more minute,” he told me. But you can’t leave now, I argued. There’s Christmas, my exams, the brand new nurse to train (and you know all the tricks). Can’t you at least wait until after Christmas? No. He couldn’t. I was exasperated. I couldn’t understand why, after they had lived here with Mom and Dad for two and a half years, they couldn’t stay another couple of weeks. Why was it so imperitive that they move out right now, suddenly, today? I just didn’t get it.

“Did I do any shopping for anyone, honey? I don’t see any presents under the tree? What did I get for Dad? He wants a new ladder so he can change the broken tiles on the roof.”

“Mom, we’re not doing the gift exchange this year. We’re just all getting together for dinner.” I tell her, again. “And Dad had a stroke, remember? He can’t walk anymore.”

“He did? When? Where was I when he had a stroke? Was I at work?” No, Mom. You were sitting in your spot on the sofa, remember?

“But what about all those presents I ordered for everyone?” she asks me. Until our dad was completely speechless and paralyzed on the right side of his body, four years ago, she did all her Christmas shopping by mail order. My sister and I handle all of their finances now, so she doesn’t send all their money to the myriad of “charities” that send her reply envelopes with their donation requests. Now, she just makes the lists. Every day, every hour, another list from another newspaper insert sale ad, or a catalogue that comes in the mail.

The lists read something like this:

Bread, milk, eggs (this is from her memory, it is how she began every grocery list that she ever made), Marie Callender TV dinners, candy, toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates (she makes this connection, she knows that these things are of the same type, like in the activity books that my 6-year old grandauter does, drawing lines between things that go together), Almond Roca, trash bags, lunch bags (for what? who’s going to take a lunch where, for God’s sake!), orange juice, Coke, Hershey w/almonds for Dad (yeah, right), Spam, English muffins, licorice, ice cream, snack cakes, laundry soap, dish soap, Zest, candy, cake mix, brownies, candy.

“Did that lady (the nurse, she means) steal all the Christmas presents that I put under the tree? she asks, alarmed and getting herself all worked up.

I don’t want to go into detail about the nurse. She won’t understand, anyway. “No, Mom. We’re not buying gifts this year, remember? There are too many of us. We’re just doing the dinner, okay?”

“Oh, that’s right!” she says, looking sheepish. “I remember now.”

“Mom, do you remember Christmas Eve when us kids were little? How you and Dad would be up all night wrapping presents? How you would make us all stay in our room and then call our names, one at a time, when you had wrapped a gift for us?” I asked her. I do this sort of thing every now and then, hoping that maybe I can ignite a spark of recognition in her.

“Of course, honey. We still do that, don’t we?” No, Mom. We don’t.

“Well, we all do it for our own kids and grandkids, Mom. You guys made it a tradition,” I tell her.

“Oh, that’s nice, honey.” She seems appeased. Content for the moment.

“Oh, no!” she says, hand over the mouth again. “I don’t think I’ve done any Christmas shopping at all!” This time her voice squeaks, and a tear escapes from the congregation of tears that are waiting to get out, from that place in her mind that knows, without really knowing, what is happening to her. “What am I gonna do, honey? It’s almost Christmas Eve and I don’t have any presents for anyone!”

“It’s all right, Mom. None of us have any presents for Christmas Eve. There are just too many of us and it’s too expensive now to exchange gifts. We’re just going to get together for dinner and to sing some Christmas Carols. Does that sound okay?” I explain one more time.

“Oh?” she asks, “how many of us are there? Do I have to get presents for everyone?”

No, Mom. It’s okay.