Carrying Flowers

There is something about flowers, especially flowers in the dead of winter, that draws people.  It was my birthday, and I wanted a small arrangement for Mother.  It was the only way I could think of to tell her thank you for bearing me and raising me.  So, I stopped at the florist and ordered a small bouquet of pink and white carnations.  They smelled heavenly, and their color popped against the dark gray light of a rainy day.  It brightened my day just to see them, but what astonished me, was that just carrying the flowers brightened others' day as well.

I walked into the home, and the office workers smiled.  "Oh, flowers!"  I paused in the hallway to remove my coat and another visitor smiled and stopped and looked.  "Oh, how pretty!"  I made my way toward the main desk, the nurses stopped and looked and smiled.  The old man in the wheelchair managed a sideways grin and said," Oh, pretty flowers."  I pushed the code to enter the Alzheimer's unit and the lady who always sits at the door waiting to get out smiled and looked.  I found Mother and showed her the bouquet and told her the flowers were for her.  She smiled, and tried to eat them.  I reminded her to smell them.  She did and smiled.

I don't know if she will have any real appreciation of the flowers; probably not.  But they will brighten her room and the staff will enjoy them.  And just carrying the pink, fragrant flowers from the florist to Mother brightened the gray day for just a moment for many.

Eating Daisies

From time to time I find the progress of Mother's Alzheimer's disease, just too much to think about.  Last week as I left the home after visiting her, I found myself in tears.  It is usually the small changes that make me weep.  I think it is because I expect the big changes - incontinence, forgetting, having trouble walking - but the small changes are like a slap across the face.

The leaves have been so beautiful, and I thought I could share some of them with Mother.  She has always been an outdoor person and loved the trees and the fall colors.  I walked the backyard and chose the most perfect yellow and red leaves I could find.  But it was one of those days, and when I showed the leaves to her, she yelled, "Cookies!", snatched them from my hand and had them in her mouth in a split second.  I was stunned, but managed to get the leaves out of her mouth.  Silly me, I tried it again.  I held them away from her and pointed out the colors and pattern, and within a second they were in her mouth again.  Once again I got them away from her and went and found a cookie for her.

Eating the nonedible (paper, dirt, flowers) is called pica, and it is a disease.  In Mother's case, it is a result of the Alzheimer's.  Last year she began to eat flowers from arrangements in the home.  This summer, I had to stop taking her flowers because she was eating them. This is what made me cry.  Mother loved flowers.  The last few times I took flowers to her, she cried and kept saying "how beautiful."  Now that is gone.  Of course I can take artificial flowers, but it is not the same.  Alzheimer's is stealing even the small pleasures of beauty from her.  I weep.  I rage.  But that part of her remains stolen.