Mama

My experiences while living with my mother and her Alzheimer's Disease.(her birthdate = January 2, 1925)

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Generally we have communion on the first Sunday of each month at our church. Our preacher was gone on vacation last week so we had our month communion this morning after a very nice Mother’s Day sermon. Mama has trouble getting up from kneeling so we stand at the altar. She usually waves to the choir as we wait for the preacher and her helper to bring the bread and juice down the line. The preacher tears off a hunk of a loaf of bread and hands it to each person. Then her helper comes by with the glasses of juice. Mama always tells the preacher, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Then when the helper comes by she ups her thank you’s a notch since she needs the liquid to wash down the bread. Today she didn’t get enough juice so she reached over and picked up my empty glass and drained it. Then she drained the glasses left by the people before us. I was trying very hard not to laugh, but I must admit my shoulders were shaking quite a bit. I almost burst out laughing when I risked a peek at the choir because they were all giggling, too. Guess I will have to ask for smaller hunks of bread or larger communion glasses—maybe I will just grab and extra juice for Mama next time.

Mama has started going to bed really early this week. It scares me when she goes to bed so early because she may get up thinking it is morning when it is not!! Earlier in the week, she wasn’t feeling too well and probably needed the extra sleep. She still has a cough and is congested—she was kind enough to share this with me. (cough, cough, sniff, sniff)

We have a digital clock in the Living room, but Mama has had this obsession with the clock in the kitchen. She kept telling me that the clock in the living room wasn’t right, but the one in the kitchen was. The clock in the kitchen kept being wrong which made me think that the battery needed changing. I changed the battery; the clock would still have the wrong time on it. So I thought we must need a new clock.

On Friday, Penny said she had made a discovery. She said that she kept thinking time was really flying or that she was really late when she would look at the clock in the kitchen. At about the same moment we both said that we had figured out that if the clock didn’t have the time Mama wanted, she moved the hands. One of us would correct it, and then she would “fix” it again. I went to “fix” it on Friday, and the hands came off. I now have a temporary substitute with a glass over the face. I have caught Mama tapping on the glass trying to get to the hands—hope she doesn’t knock this one off the wall. Will try to slip off Monday and get a replacement clock. “Glass or no glass?” will be my query as I choose a new clock