For many people living with loved ones who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, the notion that there might be a gift in that situation may seem like a cruel joke. In writing this essay, it is not my intention to tell anyone else how to feel. I simply want to write about a most unexpected gift that I received from my mother.
Toward the beginning of her seventh decade of life, I had questions about my mother. It seemed she did not get on the phone very often when my father would call. At times I wondered if she was angry with me, or very busy elsewhere. Much later I would discover that she could not track conversations well and thus avoided them. As time went by, we would note that this previously opinionated woman seldom interjected much into family conversations when we gathered. She would nod and smile. And after that we could not miss the fact that she repeated herself frequently.
My father was beside himself. He became constantly vigilant, just as one is with a toddler. Mom got lost in an airport once when he went to the restroom. He became afraid to leave her home alone. He enrolled her in a day program which helped some. But his snappy debate partner was no more, and grief and vigilance nearly killed him.
In that I knew that caregivers often die before care recipients, I urged him to place her in a lovely dementia unit in their home town of Kansas City. We would nearly buckle over with grief when the doors would go closed as we left her. How could this happen to her? How could this happen to us?
The Africans have a saying “The blessing is next to the wound.” Those in martial arts have a saying “Take the hit as a gift.” What could my mother possibly be giving me through all of this anguish? She gave me an opportunity to go deep within and awaken a truth I knew when I was born, but which had been socialized out of me. She taught me, through her disease, that love comes straight from the heart and does not need to pass through the mind. Ours was a very intellectually competitive family, and brainpower usually won the game. But love won out when her brown eyes would meet mine and love would flow like a current. It was then that the hit became a gift. I love you, Mom.
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