Since I've been concerned recently about the state of my mom's mental health and impending Alzheimer's diagnosis, I've been spending some time recalling Grandma's last days and death.
When I visited her in the home, I was struck by the lack of memories I had of her. I am still not completely sure that there were so few to be had. It might be the case that there were slightly more, but I can't remember them all. Either way, my memory is what it is (piss poor) and I had only 2 or 3 memories of Grandma to ponder while I spoke to her and held her hand.
I found that my memories did not matter in a scenario like this. We weren't very close (or very far apart). We just didn't really spend a great deal of time together, didn't know each other very well. But the few memories I had were good ones. I remember riding bikes with her one day and how she got very upset at a young mother who was also riding a bike-- with a baby in the seat behind her--and smoking a cigarette, letting the smoke blow straight into the baby's face as she rode along. Grandma was really upset and honked her little bike horn and yelled at the woman loudly as we passed. I don't recall exactly what she said, but I know she was never vulgar. She was probably telling her to put the dang thing out before her baby choked to death.
I remember her taking me grocery shopping at the market by her cabin in Alexandria when I was maybe 7-10. She was dancing behind the cart as she pushed it along. I laughed and tried to imitate her heel clicks. She laughed and danced and told me that my mom used to die of embarassment when she did this with her.
I remember her in a snowmobile suit, but I don't remember why or where.

I remember that on Thanksgiving day every year, Grandma made a huge feast, and every year, she forgot to serve the cranberries. Around the time that people were getting ready to leave, many hours later, she would jump up, smack her forehead and shout, “The cranberries!!” she also thought her gravy was lumpy, but no one else ever detected a single lump as far as I know.

I remember that her driving was horrendous.

I think she might have taken me bowling once or twice, but I’m not sure about that. It may have been a dream.

I remember that she used to rave about my looks. She would go on and on and on about my face and tell me I should be on magazine covers.

She liked to play penny poker with us kids from time to time, but I really don’t recall specifics.

Those are all of my actual memories of Grandma.

Anyway, as she lay there, staring upward with blank eyes, those memories were not important, and it was not important to have any more of them. She wasn’t that person anymore. And the memories I DID have were pleasant, so no negativity surfaced to interfere with the connection we shared in our hearts. That connection doesn’t rely on memories-good or bad, but I think it can be masked by too much negativity.

I’m fairly concerned about this aspect of things with Mom. Not that it does any good to project that far into the future- but I am anyway. I have a few more memories of Mom, but all of them are negative.

In fact, it was just recently that I’ve been able to start learning to kind of divorce myself from wanting her to be someone else. I’ve wanted her to be a good mom for so long, that it really blinded me to who she is and how she was toward me. I’ve always wanted her to like me, but I’m learning how to let go of that.

Now that she’s apparently going the way she’s going, I guess I don’t have time to work on that any more.

Maybe 4 or 5 years ago, she gave me the diary she kept when I was a baby, I think as kind of a loving gesture. I was pretty much horrified by what I read in there. Apparently I had dysentery when I was 5 months old, and spent a great deal of time in the hospital. I almost died. My mom wrote one line about it in her whole journal. “Katie’s still in the hospital.”  That’s it. No reflection on it or sadness about it. Nothing. Just facts.

I remember her breaking various household objects on my butt, slapping my face, threatening to roll my “bloody head” down the stairs….she wasn’t actually what I would call a violent woman, though. Mostly, she ignored everything that made her uncomfortable. If they gave gold medals for ignorance, she’d be rich.

But while Mom wasn’t violent, my dad was, and she did nothing to protect me from him. By his own admission, he hated me since I was born, and I bore the brunt of his insane rage. (He’s a paranoid schizophrenic, though we didn’t have a name for it back then, and he was unmedicated.)

I was sent off to live with my (dad’s-side) grandparents for quite some time during my formative years. Mom denies any knowledge of this, and for all I know, she actually forgot about it. Dad…..is not really someone you’d want to ask about that.

Anyway, main point is that she did nothing to protect me from him. And she should have.

I think the strongest memory I have of Mom is this: I was maybe 15 or 16, and I was on drugs and drinking way too much. I’d seen things that no one should see and I’d done things that were killing me on the inside, and I was desperate to open up to someone about it. Mom told me one time, in all sincerity, when she sensed I was troubled, “Katie you can tell me anything at all. I’ve been in trouble too, and I can understand what you’re going through.” My heart lifted so high, I thought it would choke me. “Really?” I asked her. “Like what trouble?” I could barely wait for her to tell her story so I could get mine out. But she said, in a near-whisper, “When I was in 8^th grade, I smoked a cigarette behind the gym, and the Sisters caught me. I was suspended from school.” My heart sank lower than it had ever been before. I knew I couldn’t tell her anything. I think about that day a lot now. I wonder how things might have gone differently for me had she been someone I could confide in.

In one way of looking at it, it’s very heart-warming that she would offer herself like that, and was so willing to hear hurtful things all for my sake. I know now that she usually will go to any lengths imaginable to avoid hearing unpleasant things, so this was really a departure for her- done out of love for me. That’s one way to look at it.

The other way is this: By that time, I’d already been through drug rehab once and locked away in a juvenile mental health ward (by my parents) once by that time. So, keeping that in mind, why in the world would she basically advertise that she really couldn’t stand to hear anything worse than smoking? She KNEW the things I had been involved with. Or at least she SHOULD have known. If she didn’t, it’s only because she shut her mind against it. Looking the other way was her specialty, and she did it very well.

I can’t recall any tenderness. I know she provided for my basics, and was kind to me when I was sick most of the time, but isn’t that to be expected from a mother? Okay, so she did the bare minimum that a mom is supposed to do. Well, almost. She provided no protection. It doesn’t exactly give me warm fuzzies to think about it.

I don’t really feel angry at her for any of this. Just really sad, and like between the two of my parents, my childhood was basically ruined. Like she didn’t think any more of me than she might think of a pair of shoes, or someone she read about in a newspaper article. This hasn’t changed over the years. She still maintains basic civility and inane banter at nearly all times, but never really seems to sink in to what she’s doing or who she’s talking to. Seems clear to me that this is a big factor in why she treats me the way she does,(me especially because I’ve always been the one to challenge her with icky things she doesn’t want to know about) and maybe even part of why Alzheimer’s got her. We all have our shortcomings. It’s okay. I just am having a very hard time imagining me taking tender loving care of her. I haven’t had enough time to process all of this crap between us. I’ve just come to the point where I am learning to accept the facts as they are-rather than how I want them to be, and now everything changes dramatically. Again.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this. I don’t hate her and I don’t wish any harm on her.. I mostly pity her. It’s not her choice to be the way she is. Or if she knowingly made bad choices, she would not have done so if she had been right in her head and in her heart. I don’t think she’s been right for a long time.

When I think of a person sitting at a loved one’s deathbed, I see them remembering the good times, and lamenting the loss of that potential. I picture them forgiving the bad times because they really don’t matter so much in the end.

When I see me sitting by my mother’s deathbed, I see nothing.

I hope I can treat her really well and make her suffering as bearable as can be. I don’t fear that I’ll be cruel or anything like that. I fear I won’t be able to open up enough to let that kind of pain flood through me. I’ve been closed to her for so long now, and the opening I’ve been able to manage so far has been the result of my being objective in my view of her. I feel like it will require a great deal of personal closeness to give her a decent final few years. That closeness isn’t there.

With Grandma I didn’t have to worry so much, because she had other people to care for her. Mom doesn’t.