Buttons

The cycle of good days and bad days continues.  What amazes me is my own adjustment to her condition.  There are times, the good days, when I think to myself, "Well, she really isn't that bad."  Denial.  But when I see her every day, it can be difficult to keep my perspective.  I become accustomed to her ways and her behaviors. 

But once in a while, the perspective comes into a harsh focus and can't be denied.  After Thanksgiving I was looking through the old photo albums and came across photos of Mother as herself before the disease took its toll.  I cried.  I cried to see her whole and laughing a real laugh, not the Alzheimer's forced he, he ,he that she has now.  I cried to see her in her garden smiling and vibrant.  I cried to see her hugging the grandchildren and great grandchildren who she is forgetting and can't quite place.  I cried because in viewing those photos I had to admit how profound and irreversible the changes are.  I had to close the album.  It was just too painful.

The disease has unbuttoned her mind.  More and more memories are being unbuttoned and float away.  What is left is a more and more primal brain.  Last week Mother chewed all but one of the buttons off of her pajamas.  No one can find the buttons, and we suspect she swallowed them. It is like that with her whole life at this point. She is hanging together by one button, and that is hanging by a lose thread. The disease is swallowing her whole.