When Does it Stop Being Funny..............?

I know it's a fact of life that people tend to get confused as they get older. Memory lapses occur, stories get repeated (and repeated and repeated and repeated), details get fuzzy.

My mother has displayed some of those characteristics recently, and it worries me. It's not that I don't think she's entitled to some confusion at the age of almost-78. It's just that HER mother had Alzheimer's, and she languished in a nursing home for almost ten years.

I wasn't around Grandmother much either, so I don't know what the first signs were. Did she just forget a few things here and there? Get confused about taking her medications? Did everyone laugh at her lapses and forget about them?

Maybe I'm just paranoid BECAUSE Grandmother had Alzheimer's.

At our family reunion three weeks ago, we were discussing the fact that Nurse Jane was left to mind a bunch of young'uns, when she wasn't much older than a young'un herself, when our parents had to make an emergency trip to Connecticut due to the death of one of our cousins. Mom was saying where all the kids stayed, and I asked what about me? She looked at me, puzzled, and said, "You weren't my child."

We laughed uproariously and I made a joke about the truth finally coming out after all these years, but the look on Mom's face was genuine confusion. My sisters and I have established that what she probably MEANT to say was that I hadn't been born yet. But I had. Don't you know whether your children had been born or not at significant events in life? I mean, I relate so many of life's milestones to how old Sweet Girl was when they occurred. I know Mom had FIVE kids to keep up with, but still..... Don't you know whether one was alive or not?

And those words..... "You weren't my child." Those aren't easily confused with "You hadn't been born yet." I still can't get over the look on her face. She looked for all the world as if she were trying to figure out to whom I DID belong.

I'm not being sensitive (I don't think); I haven't been brooding for three weeks over whether or not my mother loves me or wanted me (I think the vasectomy pretty much established that) or anything like that. It's just that I wish I could see inside her mind, to see if it's deteriorating more than expected for someone her age, or if what she's experiencing is normal.

Something I get to look forward to. Yay.

I'm not worried for selfish reasons, concerned that I may have to take Mom into my house when she becomes infirm. She wouldn't come here on a dare, all because I have animals. She hates animals. She won't even come visit here. And if something happens to these animals, I know where I can get some more. Seriously, Mom bought a long-term care policy years ago in case she got to a point where she had to have full-time care. None of us is capable (or willing.....shhhhh) of taking care of her if she becomes dependent on someone else.

But when do you know? How do you know?

Grandmother went from living alone to assisted living to a personal care home to a nursing home in what seemed to be the blink of an eye.

What do you watch for? Who decides?

Back Before I Was Old......

Way back, in a previous wifetime....

I would stay up every night and watch the eleven o'clock news. Sometimes I graded papers AFTER that. I always got to see Monday Night Football, sometimes all the way to the end. Even if it went into overtime.

I saw all the bowl games to their completion. I read until the wee hours, then got up and went to teach ... in a real classroom ... in an inner-city school ... all day.

Once I was working under a deadline, typing some transcription for a friend, and it took me longer than I thought it would. I wound up typing until 4:00 AM. Slept for an hour, got up and did my aerobics (not sure that really happened, but it sounds good in the story), then went and taught high school English all day. Got out of school and went to a Garth Brooks concert in Atlanta.

When I was out of school, I could stay up even later, knowing I could sleep in.

Those were the days.

Not the previous wifetime, mind you.

Being able to stay up late.

Now I prepare dinner, clean up the kitchen, try to cram in some crocheting or, on nights like tonight, stare idiotically at a stupid video game, then look up and gasp -- oh my goodness, it's eight o'clock already -- and it's bedtime.

THEN I had to clean the kitchen and -- oh my goodness -- I almost forgot to write my blog entry for tonight.

I can sleep in all the way to about 6:30 tomorrow morning.

It's the curse of old age.