It’s been a ride that has not reached a destination. Those people who say it’s the journey, not the destination, do not know what they are talking about.
My mother is descending—has descended—into dementia. My wife and I have noticed little markers along the way over the last year. I questioned my father and like many husbands, many wives, he insisted she was fine; he never noticed anything. He was lying of course, more to himself than to either of us.
There were episodes he could not possibly have missed, things only now coming to light. But any admission by him that Mom was not up to par would be an admission, first, to himself and one he was not in the least prepared to make. This was the woman he married sixty-eight years ago following a blind date and a fast courtship, upon whom he has relied for everything—up to and including her cleaning his glasses every morning—ever since.
Two weeks ago, or is it now three, her hip shattered in four places. Surgery followed. The surgeon made it sound so easy. Since the hip socket was not involved, she would require but a thirty minute operation to pin and anchor and clamp bones in place, followed by four maybe six weeks in a rehabilitation center, then back home—piece of cake.
I knew that elderly patients with moderate confusion suddenly suffering trauma and surgery may emerge from anesthesia in a greater state of confusion. Perhaps they emerge no worse. The surgeon was optimistic—show me one who isn’t. My mother did not awaken unscathed. Her confusion swiftly grew so distinct she was unable to participate in therapy, and then began nighttime rages of shrieks and howls and daytime spaces filled with blank recognition.
She no longer knows me. She remembers the name but can no longer recollect the connection nor place my vaguely familiar face. She makes a heartbreaking plea reaching for my hand, please, would I please tell Russell to come for her and take her from this place. She is living an eternal moment no longer bounded by tomorrow or yesterday. She knows not where she is; she knows only that she wants “him” to come for her. She repeatedly asks, will I promise to tell him.
My father, ninety, who just retired last June, shrinks in upon himself as I discuss Medicare limits and “asset spend-downs” necessary to qualify for Medicaid, and he becomes uncharacteristically passive when we discuss which of us should be appointed guardian as we confront future medical and financial decisions. I explain to him, she will not be able to return home. He knows that, he says brusquely. He has that figured out.
I leave in snow with a forty-minute drive home ahead of me, and he tells me in a voice I have not heard since my late teenage years when driving to college, I am to call him so he will know I arrived safe. And like in my teenage years, I forget; he calls and chews me out, a comfort I thought I had outgrown.
Don’t ask how I am holding up. I have watched sons and daughters, husbands and wives more or less disintegrate in periods like this, and painfully speculated how I would react. With my parents I have sought retreat into the role of a pastoral clinician, seeking a cool, cool zone of professional detachment. It works best with the lawyer and the nursing home social worker and the customer service representative at the bank. Otherwise—it isn’t working very well at all.
Visions of mortality dance in my head. St. Paul said death is the final enemy. True enough as far as it goes, but he made little mention of the others, far worse, we encounter on the way. Death, that isn’t a problem. If we go to sleep one night and wake up dead, that’s hardly a problem at all. But this journey is a journey of aging, a ruthless, irrevocable thrashing of faculty, facility, a not infrequent plummeting tumble into a loss of identity and sense of self. We, each of us, are bodies of flesh moving through time “falling, flying, or tumbling in turmoil” aging implacably unto death.
Yet we are more than that. To us, the psalmist recalls, He has given the works of His creation and made us only a little lower than the angels. “Oh,” the old hymn prays, “let me not forget. . . .”
Russell E. Saltzman is pastor of Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church, Kansas City, Missouri. He was associate editor of First Things during his parish sabbatical in 2009 following the death of founding editor Richard John Neuhaus. His previous On the Square articles can be found here.
Comments:
Two years later, at a point when I’d accepted and loved taking care of her 23 hours a day — sneaking out for an hour at the gym or grocery shopping every day — something unseen entered the house. It was Christmas day and she called me by my name. I told her how wonderful it was that her memory had improved. But she said, “no, it’s not my memory, it’s all these people who invited here for Christmas. They told me.” Truth is, I would have been shocked enough that she knew it was Christmas. For the next week and half, every time I entered the room she was talking to someone I couldn’t see. I’d watch her quietly staring at one part of the room, then she’d either laugh and she’d turn to me and ask “Is it true? Are you really my little boy?” I’d say yes and she’d tell me a story the “guests” just told her about my childhood and ask if it really happened. I’d say yes and she’d roll back in bed, crying and saying how happy she was.
Then on the 12th day of Christmas, Epiphany, I had a dream. I only remember the end: I was arguing with a guy who had been sent to give me the message that this was the “day God had chosen to take your mother home.” “God can wait another six months,” I said. The guy with message just smiled,“it’s not your decision.” I opened my eyes, jumped out of bed, and ran to my mother’s room. And there she was sitting up in bed, stiff. The paramedics guessed that she’d been dead a few hours when I found her.
Not everyone gets a week of “guests” or a dream announcing God’s decision. It’s not like that kind of thing happens to me all the time. But it did happen. I don’t have to tease out the theological implications of something like this for the readers of First Things. I’m just reporting what happened. And happens. Until we get to that new heaven and new earth.
Therefore, I have signed a Living Will, that if I am ever in this state, no one is to take any "extraordinary measures" to keep me alive.
I would never presume to make this choice for anyone else. But this is what I have decided, for myself. I would rather that medical resources were devoted to a younger person, who would better benefit from them.
After all, there are many who detest our Lord and His Mother and their presence / gifts in our lives - esp. of unborn children who too are considered as 'demented and worthless ' !
May the loving prayers and needed help sustain many in similar situations !
P.S - many elderly lack B12 vitamin with attendant effects such as confusion ; it needs to be taken under the tongue for it to be absorebed in many elderly ; googling would give enough info .
Noni juice - another agent that seemingly helps in a variety of ailments !
There were always the few who lived long, with similar presentation. But you are dealing with mother and father now - far less common than even forty years ago, never mind the long account of human history.
(The popular idea that most of the increase in lifespan is because of lower infant mortality and the treatment of childhood and/or infectious diseases, and people aren't really living much longer once they reach 60 is not accurate, BTW.)
Billy, you need to work harder at being human.
Prayers for you and your family. I am grateful to you for being willing to put this out in public, thus opening your personal struggles up for the comments/suggestions/politics of the larger community.
Personally I believe that we do not belong to each other, not truly, in the sense of possessing. And that even if a person seems to be, as it is often called, "going away," we do not really know for sure what is happening, or "where" they are, really. We have no right to act as if we do.
All we can do is try to love them, in the agape sense of the word, which means a certain level of detachment: They are not the receptacles for our problems, and fears, and needs. They are objects only in the sense of being recipients of our love.
Thank you, St. Benedict. I am putting my order in for myself and my loved ones.
Diane
God bless you, your mother, father, and all of your family. I hope you all have peace, and happiness, during this very difficult time.
As a woman with a life-long disability and now also a terminal one as well, all I can do is thank you for your courage, especially in talking about it. There can indeed be ills on the way to death and pain. But the destination is its own reward; relief from pain (yours and hers), on top of everything else.
Prayers for you and wishing you strength for the journey.
You should consider the medications could have a bad effect and it may be a temporary situation or not as bad as you would imagine it. It happened to my grandparents when they were given medications that had a bad reaction especially in hospitals. For elderly often chemical medications are overly harsh. And consider vitamin deficiencies and healthy diets and pray for a recovery.
(If your mother takes an anti-cholesteral medications there is alot of research proving that it does cause types of amnesia/dementia, in a significant amount of patients.) Too many chemicals tends to deplete necessary vitamins so it is very important to take vitamins. Once my grandparents had less chemical medications their memory improved significantly.Modernist physicians tend to consign eldery to dementia overly quickly in the meantime while administering many medications that they do not consider to possibly be problemation.
Cnsider yourself fortunate to be with your parents and do not give up.
Remember Jesus' words and that holy spirit does work to heal people if we have faith as small as a mustard seed.
