She loves the day club,  but sometimes I think she might be onto me. The other morning we were in the car on the way there and she turned to me and asked, "what exactly is the purpose of this place we're going, anyway?" I answered the best way I knew how.

"It's a place where people your age can spend the day together so they don't have to be alone all day." I know she has a fear of being alone and it's the bigger reason we don't leave her alone anymore. 

She said, "well, that's a good idea and they really are all very nice there." Then she added, "you just make sure you tell them that I'm not an inmate there and that I still have all of my faculties."

I assured her,"they already know all about you, Mom."     

The stories she tells

Over the past year or two I've watched, and mostly listened to Mom's stories evolve. They've slowly gone from familiar stories I've heard over and over throughout my life, to unrecognizable, yet fairly entertaining yarns about people I've never heard of.  With Alzheimer's you expect them to forget things, but to hear her totally fabricate something gets to be a little weird. It all stems from something in her memory, I'm sure, but there is at least one or two stories she tells that seem to be complete fabrication.

When we go to any large department store, she will tell me how the Troyer boys helped to build it years ago, and when she is telling it she will always look up toward the ceiling as if to see one of them perched up on the rafters. We are about 250 miles from where she grew up and although she did know a family named Troyer, I doubt any of them helped to build the local Wal Mart 5 years ago. But I always listen to her and I always seem to look up with her, like maybe we will see one of them sitting on the rafters, waving.

These days, too, when she talks about Dad she'll tell someone all about how their marriage was the best in the world and how happy they both were. Then she will immediately follow that with, "but it wasn't to be for very long.  He was taken shortly after we married. Just got sick and died." That one in particular is heart-wrenching for me because they had 49 years together.  But on the upside, she's forgotten about the whole "Vioxx killed him" scenario that she used to be so obsessed with. And then sometimes she'll even seem to forget she was ever married. She'll say, "Love never found me.  Having that perfect someone just wasn't meant to be for me."

My Grandmother married a man from Italy in 1953. Mom was grown and on her own but he was still a perfect step-dad. And when Mom got married and started having kids, he really was the perfect Grampa. He never had children of his own and we were the world to him.  He had a shoe repair shop in the basement of his garage and he made wine in the basement of his house. We often talk about how good his wine was. As kids we were always given a small glass with a holiday meal. So, last week when my younger sister visited she wanted to go to some of the wineries we have here in Indiana. So we took Mom and went to a wine tasting. We really had a ball...at least everyone except the woman serving the wine.  She stood behind the wine bar and poured a little in each of our glasses and when she got to Mom's, Mom said, "my Grandfather came from Belgium (that much was right) and he made wine (wrong)."

The lady said, "well, that's neat. You don't hear too much about the Belgians making wine."

Mom said, "oh yes! His wine was so good he started his own winery. People came from all over to learn from him how to make it."

(Mom's grandfather did come over from Belgium but he was a glass maker and much more of a wine drinker than maker.)

At this the lady was very interested and asked, "where is his winery?"

Mom said, "Oh, that's been years ago and it's not around anymore. But it was in Ohio."

At this point I said, "Mom, Grampa Louis made wine, too. He was from Italy." I looked at the lady and added, "but he just made it in his basement." I thought this might end that line of conversation but as she poured wine from the next bottle and came down to pour into Mom's glass, Mom started with the same line as before.

"My grandfather came from Belgium and he made wine..." I think after the third or fourth tasting the lady either figured it out or thought we'd been to one too many wineries for that day.

The oddest story she tells right now is the one where she was asked to come and tutor a bunch of boys. She never says where this took place or who the boys were, but they were the best six boys she'd ever been around. they gave her gifts when she left, too. She claims to have gotten the purse she carries from them. She also has an old manicure set that she swears came from them. With most of her stories I can pick out little bits of real life that she's gotten confused with other things but this one is a mystery. I don't know that she ever tutored anyone, although she did help out and teach Art at my school when I was in the 5th grade. But only once a week, I think. She also taught CCD on Sunday mornings before Mass.

I continue to be surprised on a daily basis...

 

Time to start cleaning

Mom seems to really like the Day Club. She's asking every day now what time she has to be ready to go. Her schedule was originally W-Th-F. But I changed it to M-W-F so that she goes every other day and doesn't have 4 straight days that she doesn't go. That was enough time for her to forget that she goes...and forget that she likes it.  It's so good for her to be around people her own age and still be able to come home at the end of the day.  And it has to make me a better caregiver. That free time for me is going to be great when I can stop and enjoy it. If I ever do. The first free day I had I spent cleaning her room. It's hard to get in there and start throwing stuff out when she's right there. But she's become such a hoarder of odd things, I had to get in there just to clear it all out. Every rubber band on every newspaper that comes to the house is wrapped around her denture cup because, "you never know when you might need a rubber band." And if it rains they put them in little orange plastic bags. Those are very neatly folded and stuffed in various places around her dresser. She stashes any and all pencils she might find...and then when she takes a notion to do a puzzle she can never find a pencil. And neither can I unless I go in her room or look in her purse and find a bundle for her.  And books, too.  She's always been one to read before she goes to bed so she has books and magazines stashed on her nightstand.  Most of them came from my bookshelf and she insists on a different one every night. She wore one old paperback to a frazzle. The pages were all falling out of it and she spent more time trying to keep them in order than trying to read the book, but she was kind of attached to it so she always had it by her chair or by the bed. So, the first day she was gone all day I cleared off her dresser and made new picture collages for her wall. I put books away and threw out the old paperback. And that was just a start. Since then Stan has been on vacation or I've had the grandkids, so I haven't been able to do much more, but when summer starts winding down, I can get back at it.