A Thousand Thoughts, Metaphorically

Kathryn is at this moment dining with 4 cousins. They call themselves "The Jacobs Ladies." They are descendants of Emma Jacobs, or perhaps even one generation back from her, or maybe it was Sheraton Jacobs, the wonder grandfather born on the banks of the Sheraton River in Iowa in 1846. However these five women may be related, they are indeed and they convene once a month, approximately. One recently lost her husband to frontal temporal lobe dementia. Another lost hers to a plane crash. A third husband decided to open the closet door. A fourth still has a husband. And Kathryn is beset with Alzheimer's disease. When they convene, it is industrial strength convening. No sip of water, a genteel salad and a peck goodbye after a friendly hour of fluff. Not at all! This is the real thing. They have been known to listen and remember and giggle and remind for 5 hours, much to the consternation of the locale chosen for the monthly gathering. And that's where they are now. So perhaps it's a good time, a convenient time to update and remember. The changes in Kathryn seem now to occur almost daily. Short term memory selectively fails. That is, she remembers things of major impact such as the three hour discussion we had yesterday with a kind, competent, compassionate professor from BYU who had come to help us talk with a young man deeply troubled by his own sexual preferences. That discussion, Kathryn remembers well. On the other extreme, if we discuss two things for her to do, she often forgets the first, and sometimes in proceeding to do the second, she will be distracted and wander off to do something else and thereby also forget the 2nd item on the list. Each day when we rise is a guessing game for her as to what the day is and what we are going to do. It is difficult because she can't remember the first two events if I mention three. I am not yet skilled in handling this in the best way. I don't get angry or even perturbed. I just am not satisfied that my communications are as effective as they could be and should be. Kathryn has become increasingly obsessive about things. She left a shoe in the car of one of her friends who took her for an overnight stay to Bear Lake. She mentioned the missing shoe several times a day. She wanted to call Dearie, her friend, but would forget about it almost immediately. She has obsessed about the death of emory boards (we have hundreds now), the right kind of eyeliner (they are multiplying in the drawers), skirts (DI knows us by name and takes us immediately to the skirt department), watching special news shows on Friday (Fareed Zakaria or 60 minutes (neither of which have we ever wateched), how to meet the imagined expectations of our social worker at the Alzheimer's office, and so forth. Kathryn has a noticeable loss in her ability to think clearly and logically, For example, she cannot remember where she leaves things. But then she will look for them in the oddest places. She looked in her purse for the lost shoe. She has looked in a glasses case for a notebook. She has looked for her glasses in little boxes not big enough to hold them. We used to joke that Kathryn had her own organizational mantra, "A place for everything and everything in a place." She used to remember where those special places were. She no longer can, yet she thinks she can, and so puts things down "in a place" and it becomes a mad scramble to find them because there is no logical reason from them to be where we eventually find them. And the constancy of the loss hurts her. I wish I could take away that hurt and pain. I can't always do that. What is happening with our children is becoming a jumble. The most difficult for her has been her trying to keep track of where Adam and Whitley and their kids are in their journey. She just could not remember if they were still interviewing for the job in Seattle, or if they had accepted, or if they had bought a house, or if they had moved there yet. It still goes on to some extent. She talks to friends about our family and I amaze at how convoluted the communication is. Yet, what difference does it make? Most people don't pay that much attention to the status and lives of other folks' children, so there is really no point in trying to remove the twists and curls from Kathryn's communicated time line. It just doesn't make any difference. I think everyone in the family will remember the months devoted to trying to teach Kathryn the intricacies of the MP3 player. That was before we went to Belgium. I remember when Mom first went to Rowland Hall to teach. They gave her a Mac computer to use at home. She was the master of it quite quickly, at least for the kinds of things she needed to do. Less than 10 years later, the MP3 player became a major hurdle. It simply did not compute as far as she was concerned. It was impossible to connect the dots for her. Yet she kept asking and we all kept trying. Now, the situation is much more difficult. She can word process on the iPad if I set it up for her. Same with the iMac (desktop.) I set it up. She types. I file. I send. I store. I retrieve. I proofread (as best I can without hurting her feelings.) She can't do any of those things. She has great trouble with telephones, even though she has her own. She doesn't know when to talk, how to answer, and so on. It just plain hurts, folks. Yet she is still driven by the urge, the drive to learn and fend for herself. Truly remarkable. I can still see much of your Mom in there. Some things are gone as far as this life is concerned. Her love for us is not. Her drive to work hard is not. Her long term memories are not (whereas most of mine are!!) Her love of people is not. Her warmth and compassion are not. The ability to make sense of today is the problem and will continue to dissipate. I will say that I have spent most of my life trying to prove to her that I am almost good enough to have her. (If you don't know what I am talking about, go to the blog entitled "I Think I Have Made A Terrible Mistake." You'll know why.) This is my real chance and best opportunity