Coffee, phone calls, and dementia
Long before I knew my mom had dementia, she stopped calling me. I lived a few states away from her and noticed that weeks would go by without her name showing up on my phone. We were not like some families, who only chatted occasionally on birthdays or holidays. I called my mom daily through college, sometimes multiple times a day, and my dad nearly as frequently. We were so close.
For the first few years of the no-calling, I took it very personally. I had just had my first two babies and was wrestling with postpartum depression. That my mom was virtually ghosting me was a troubling and upsetting thing. I wondered if it was because she had adopted and never had biological children. Maybe she didn't know what to say. My sister tried to convince me that Mom was too busy to talk to me. But I know my mother and our relationship so well and I knew something else was wrong.
I am embarrassed that it took me years after she was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment to finally connect that the phone call changes might be caused by the dementia. Then my eyes were finally opened. She simply was forgetting how long it had been since we talked and because I wasn’t physically present, it was easy for it to go unnoticed. And my suspicions were additionally confirmed when every time I gave her a call, she acted like it hadn’t been long at all.
Our conversations became shorter and shallower. She asked me the same questions and told me the same stories. Her favorite story was about throwing the coffee grounds from her French press out in the yard as a fertilizer. She loved that her dog, a big German Shepherd-Akita mix, always jumped up right when she picked up the glass coffee canister because the dog knew it was a cue to go outside. My mom loved that a dog could be so astute and she loved that this very smart animal was her companion.
Every morning throughout my childhood my mom brewed a big pot of black coffee. She always drank it black. Even after my dad died, she’d still brew a whole pot, and sip on it throughout the day, turning it into iced coffee with sugar-free flavored syrup and nonfat milk. She started buying the syrup at the restaurant supply store because they had a better price than the grocery store.
She stopped drinking her iced coffee at some point because she had insomnia and her doctor advised her to not drink caffeine after noon. But the morning cup stayed.
When her French press broke, I bought her a Cuisinart insulated stainless steel carafe pot that matched the one we got at our wedding. It was easier to clean up, I said. She liked it and started using it every morning and never talked about the French press again.
After the quarantine and COVID lockdown started, I began calling Mom every day. I tried to call at the same time, just after my kids were in bed, so she could predict when I’d call. I also found that using video calls was very helpful - she seemed to recall much more of the conversation when I was talking to her "face to face" and she had visual aids. As someone who already dislikes talking on the phone this was a push out of my comfort zone, to have to turn on a camera and monitor my facial expressions during the conversation. I’d force a smile on my face so I could communicate to her that everything was okay while I was also chasing my kids around and juggling the baby.
Then in the fall of 2020, I had a moving company come to her house to give me a quote on moving her possessions. It was three years after her diagnosis and time for my mom to come live with us. I had agonized over this decision for years but the summer of the pandemic was the most overwhelming as she was increasingly isolated and living in dangerous conditions. We tried to figure out the perfect timing and how to travel safely. I bought and canceled so many flights to California that I lost track. First I was going to travel by myself, then our whole family was going to drive out, then a friend was going to come with me, then my husband was able to take time off work and come. There were so many logistics but the scariest part was breaking the news to my mom. How would we do it? Would she resent me for the rest of our lives?
The movers who came to do the estimate were walking through the house, going over all her things that would come with her. They paused in the kitchen at the coffee maker because I had noted it on a list, and asked her about it. Would it come with her, too?
I don’t need the coffee pot, she said. I don’t drink coffee.
Comments
Post a Comment