I want to share a few stories about life with my mama, Hazel, and life with Alzheimer's Disease...

My dad passed away with his third heart attack and eventually my mother remarried. My mother and Dan both had marriages that lasted 30+ years and I believe they just did not want to spend their remaining years here on earth alone without companionship. They had a home in southern Ohio and one in Florida...where they spent approximately six months out of each year as "snowbirds" do!

I had never heard of Alzheimer's Disease but I learned from experience...starting the day after my stepdad's death when I "inherited" my mother. I wasn't around my mother a lot because of the distance between us most of the time and I wasn't aware of the shape her mind was in.

The first week or so after Dan's death I took Mom out to eat quite a bit...I knew by then something was very wrong and eating was something she truly related too. At this time in her life she was tiny and I was thinking she had a voracious appetite for her size! Well, I was to learn later on that with Alzheimer's Disease one does not realize one is full...one just continues eating! There was the incident at KY Fried and the mirror she was facing while we were eating..."Oh!" she exclaimed..."Look at that old lady with white hair. She just keeps looking at me...I think she knows me"...and waved and talked to the "lady" the rest of the time she was munching on her chicken dinner!

Mirrors proved to be the enemy a few miles on down the road...A resounding crash against glass one day led me running into her room where my mother had thrown a glass of ice water at the mirror! "That old lady just keeps looking at me...everywhere I go she's there, too!" my mother exclaimed. Needless to say, my sons and I covered all the mirrors in the household except for the one in the bathroom after that...and on occasions my mother and the old "lady" held grand conversation!

I am sure many others in the same position as I was at the time are acquainted with..."the baby"...My mother religiously cared for a large baby doll I had given her many years ago. It slowly became a living entity to her and in order to get her to go somewhere without it, I had to provide a babysitter. I would take the "baby" to my mother-in-law's house, sit it on the couch and return with a teary-eyed mother that missed her so! After maliciously cutting the "baby's" hair, she was transformed into a he and I went shopping for the traditional blue-instead of pink...once more.

We had three locks on each door that would lead to outside so escape was impossible...My mother tried to teach herself the fine art of lock-picking a few times...one fine memory was me finding her with two unlocked and when I scolded her-by now we had role reversals and she was my child-I turned just in time to stop her swing at me with a metal ball bat!

Eventually my mom stopped walking...not to fear! One of my sons would pick her up, put her in the car, and we would proceed with a long car ride...or sit her in her chair at the lake with one of us beside her, and continue our fishing and/or picnic...things she was used do doing before dementia took her life as she knew it.

I had my mother at home with me for five years...until it was medically impossible for me to keep her. Lots of memories and stories evolved from that time-some funny and some sad. I try to keep them alive and reflect on the humorous...I try to do this for Mama.

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