what does it mean?

"memory is a kind of ceaseless remodeling." - this is from that harper's piece on memory. i kept reading and kept thinking about it. 

and then old friend of the blog, malorie, wrote a lovely piece on the weirdness of the pandemic time on her substack. her thoughts are far more eloquent than mine. but i thought it might be time to start to figure out what i think about it and what it did to me.

to be honest, we didn't have it that bad. we already live in the countryside, away from people. i took more walks than normal - i discovered a new path around our lake after ten years of living here. it was actually quite nice. even though i started a new job just as the pandemic started, even that worked out very well, though i wondered in the beginning if it would. 

where things have changed is on the social front. i find it hard to restart a social life. we used to have people over for dinner regularly. these days, we hardly ever do so. we are having some people over for friendsgiving this weekend. it's a smaller group than it has been some years. husband and i discussed the guest list and we just couldn't get our heads around a bigger group. so we'll be 8. i used to not blink at 20. i think this difference is one of the consequences of corona time. 

but i don't know what else is. it feels so hard to judge something when you don't have enough distance to it. and when it feels like everyone has forgotten it. i don't hear anything about it at all here in denmark. they haven't even recommended a booster shot this year for the new variants. and i haven't even had it. at least not that i know of. it's kind of like everyone has forgotten. but i suspect our bodies and our psyches haven't forgotten. but what it means? i have no idea. what do you think it means?

fragments of memories

i was reading this piece in harper's on memory. and the list of memory fragments in the fourth paragraph made memories start to flit into my mind. driving along I-80 in iowa in 1982 and seeing the ditches alight with fireflies - the first ones i'd ever seen. we just didn't have them in south dakota. i suppose it was too dry. 

or a memory of lying on the dark blue scratchy wool carpet in our house in town, tracing the outlines of all the weird bumps that formed the pattern, thinking about how god had a big book with everything i'd ever do written down as a plan. and trying to defy it, thinking, he wrote that i'd move my arm right now, so i'm not going to. and then thinking, no, he wrote that too! 

then a memory of lying on a bridge on a hot summer night, down in the pasture by the lake we'd rented for our horses, surfaced in my mind. it was that life-changing summer where i broke up with my california boyfriend and decided to go to the university of iowa. i can hear the sounds of the crickets and cicadas and the splash of the water flowing under the bridge, the whisper of the wind gently moving the grass, the feel of the warm air on my skin. i don't recall any thoughts that were in my head, only the sounds, smells and the physicality of it.

some memories are so clear, or at least the fragments of them are. and i feel like i don't really choose them, they're just there. 

and now i'll go back and finish that harper's piece. just wanted to capture these fragments here. i'm going to see what other memories surface in the next days and try to capture them as well. then i'll see where they take me.

unbidden waves of nostalgia

me and a naughty pony of my past - clearly a second place pony with that red ribbon

the past few days, i've had some waves of nostalgia washing over me. i'm not sure i can pinpoint what brought it on and i've been trying to figure that out. it might be because i'm listening to the vinyl café - the simple, but hilarious stories of dave and his family are somehow nostalgic, as many of them involve memories. if you're interested, you can find playlists of them on spotify. 

it's also listening to the new podcast that obama has with bruce springsteen (also on spotify, i swear this isn't a spotify ad). it made me think about when i was introduced to the music of the boss - on a debate tournament trip in a van to the now-long-shuttered university of south dakota - springfield - when our high school english teacher/debate coach talked of the nebraska album. i'm not even sure he played it in the car, except maybe a song came on the radio, but i think it was in the days when things were still on vinyl, so i don't think he could have played it in the car. when that teacher's name popped up, commenting on a post on facebook, i actually sent a friend request. i wanted to tell him that the podcast had made me think of him.

my cousin, normally flitting about the world for her job, is stuck at home in california and sharing old pictures prolifically in a family group on facebook. many of them i've never seen before. it's kind of strange that she has so many family photos since her family's house burned to the ground when i was 5, but i guess other family members have shared pictures with her, as she seems to have a never-ending trove. there's definitely nostalgia in that. and i don't recall having so many family photos around from that side of the family - i guess my dad was the youngest of 9, so there weren't so many left when it was his turn to get some.

i even think that my grocery delivery company has made me feel nostalgic. they're tempting me with the first asparagus of the season (it's from portugal). and that, of course, has me thinking of my dad, who was known for his asparagus. my patch is a bit overwhelmed by last season's weeds and i'm feeling a bit guilty about that. the weather is rubbish this weekend - it's been sleeting out there off and on all day - really more like slushing, if that was a thing - or i'd probably have been out there weeding and maybe digging up the roots and moving them because they're not doing that well where they are. and  i'm feeling like maybe my dad is frowning down on how i've let them go. asparagus was his pride and joy. 

do you think the pandemic is making us nostalgic? i was definitely feeling nostalgic in the past week for the beautiful holiday we had in barcelona one year ago, just before the pandemic was declared. maybe that's it. i'm so glad we had that trip, but i ache to travel again. and to see friends. and to invite them over for dinner and play board games. and to not feel like i have to hesitate. and me, a non-hugger, might even miss hugging people. no wonder i'm nostalgic. we've lost so much. or maybe we haven't lost it, but we've definitely put it on hold.

on links and hands and the strange ways of grief

it seems that email newsletters are the new blogs and i found myself subscribing to edith zimmerman's drawing links some months ago after reading about it in the reply all newsletter (which is another very good one). anyway, edith (who seems to be much younger and more millennial than her name sounds) draws much of the newsletter as simple cartoon panels and they are very navel gazing and even a bit mundane, just as good old blogging was. maybe that's why i like it so much. as the name implies, she also always has some links to interesting things - book reviews, other newsletters, just generally interesting writing out there on the web.

without her, i probably wouldn't have found this thoughtful piece from the school of life on hands and the virtues of studying them closely. and of course, that made me think about my mom's hands (pictured here in a photo i've posted before). i can picture them on the steering wheel of the old blue stationwagon, air typing whatever thoughts flitted through her mind, or perhaps what the announcer was saying on the radio. i find myself doing that as well. her hands did so many things - repairs in the barn, a fancy hanging macrame table with glass top and fiery orange ceramic beads that i recall her making back in the 70s. i wish i had that table now, or at least the beads so i could recreate it, i wonder what ever happened to it? she buckled halters and harnesses on horses. she gripped the handlebars of her vast collection of bikes and rode them on long treks. in her later years, her hands became wrinkled and diminished, but i think they were actually still deceptively strong and capable, even as her mind grew weak and incapable. perhaps the piece is right that, "we might go so far as to say that if what we can colloquially call ‘the soul’ – that confluence of deep identity, vulnerability and singularity dwells anywhere, then it must be in the hands."  

my grief over the loss of my mother feels like a strange thing. i still haven't cried about it, i think because it was such a relief in some ways - the mother i knew was long gone for some time, but it comes to me in odd moments. the other day, a little shed that was housing some chairs and other things from the garden collapsed in the storm winds we had. i'd been feeding some of the wild kitties inside of a birdhouse sabin built in her woodworking class in the 6th grade that was standing under the shed. i poured the food into a little pink kitty bowl that was one of many that my mother bought at some point in a dollar store and which i brought home with molly, when i brought her back to denmark in 2012. the storm was raging with near-hurricane force winds and lashings of rain, but i suddenly panicked that both the bird house and that little pink bowl had been smashed. the dismay i felt at losing this stupid item, but which my mother had bought, was one of the strongest pangs of grief i'd felt so far. the thought that it was smashed and gone hit me hard, bringing home to me that my mother is also gone and i was despondent at the thought of losing this strange, small connection to her. so i donned my wellies and a coat and rushed out there to see if i could find the bowl and the bird house in the rubble. and it turned out that they were both fine - the bird house was knocked off its pole, but otherwise fine and the bowl flew into the grass, but was completely intact and not even chipped. relief flooded through me and i was almost embarrassed by how upset i'd been at the thought of losing that silly, cheap bowl. i had also been worried about the bird house, but knew that husband could fix that if it was broken. but the bowl could have been beyond repair. i've brought it in the house now and washed it and put it up in the cupboard where it's safe, a small piece of my mother, still intact.

dear autumn

dear autumn,

you and i used to have such a great relationship. you used to bring with you the promise of a new semester, the excitement of all of the new books to be read from a fresh syllabus, the comfort of a new university sweatshirt and the impending trip to the seminary co-op bookstore. when i close my eyes, i can hear the crunch of leaves, feel the crispness of your air in my nose. i'm enveloped by the memory of a new brown suede coat wrapped around me as i walk down 57th street and turn on woodlawn, so i can pass by the classic lines of frank lloyd wright's robie house as i head for campus. the golden sunshine is stunning on the red and orange leaves, making the day look warmer than it actually is.

these days, autumn, you fill me with a bit more dread. there's no new semester beginning, there's just the impending darkness of winter ahead. short, often grey days and relentless rain, wind sweeping in off the distant north sea to the west, the trees denuded before they even have a chance to change to glorious jewel tones.

autumn, you give way too easily to the darkness of winter in these latitudes, and that's why you fill me with dread. please be kind this year, with a few glorious golden days to look back on when the darkness comes.

your old friend,
/julie

live your life now or what are you gonna remember?

i found myself fuming today. last week, the belt on our riding lawnmower broke and i went to the local "tractor place" to get a new one. i brought the old one with me and a picture of the lawnmower, in order to ensure that i'd get the right one. the guy googled the model number (damn, why didn't i think of that at home? <insert sarcasm font here>) and then badly read the number on the very worn out belt i brought in. it was nearly rubbed off and i was pretty sure he wasn't reading it correctly. i said so in the moment, but he was sure. two days later, when i picked up the belt he ordered, it looked much shorter than the original, which i took in with me. a new guy who was there, a bit of a young smartass, assured me that the old one was just stretched out. i had my doubts. but what could i say at 4 p.m. on a friday, other than that i'd try it. of course, it was far too short. so i went there again today. there was only one guy tending customers. he was the old owner of the place. after he tended the guy ahead of me, he just didn't bother to come back to talk to me, me being a woman and all. so i waited, and waited. a woman came out of the office and did some fiddling around and then finally asked me if i had gotten any help. i said, "no, just waiting for someone to notice i'm here." she giggled and opened the door to the workshop. some other rube was sent in and he walked past me, then turned and awkwardly asked me if i needed help. i showed him my belt problem and suggested that maybe this time we measure my old one before ordering me a new one. he took the old one and disappeared. he came back with one that was the same length. proving that they had it all along and that i wouldn't have needed to wait a week. i can only conclude that i received shitty service since i was a woman with a foreign accent and i said as much to the woman in the office. she muttered that they were busy on friday and i said i ordered i wednesday. <insert eye roll here>  and meanwhile, the lawn grew half a foot.

why do i tell this petty, stupid story? for one, because it's bugging the hell out of me. and for another because life is too short for this bullshit. women have taken this kind of treatment for too long. and frankly, i'm too old and too experienced to take it anymore. life is too short.

life is too short because my mother has been lost to alzheimer's. i have no idea who the woman is who is left. even her hands, which have always been a source of strength and comfort to me (mostly because i see her strong, capable hands when i look at my own), are unfamiliar, alien even. who is this woman and what did she do with my mother? why can't i remember the good things about my mother when faced with this shell she has become? and will this happen to me too? will my daughter have to go through this? will she lose her good memories of the mom who went to get tattoos with her and traveled with her and and bought her the coolest shoes?

i don't know the answer to that and it scares the shit out of me. but all i can do is live right now. and that means not doing a job that may someday fit if i'm lucky. and that means living right here, right now. planting my garden, enjoying the kittens, reading a good book, learning new things - like spinning and weaving and dyeing. embracing the creative people in my life and hanging on for dear life. what am i going to remember? i don't know, but i hope it's something.

forgetting mother's day

i really truly normally do not care about these things, but it's gotten to me here this evening that it's mother's day and until my sister said "happy mother's day" to me here at the end of the day, no one in this house had acknowledged it. even tho' i spent the entire day with my daughter and sat and had tea and breakfast with husband. i realize i'm not his mother, but he could have encouraged the child. and she liked about a zillion people's pictures of them and their mothers, but didn't even say happy mother's day until she heard me thanking my sister for being the first one to say anything. and i'll admit that i think it bugs me more because it's everywhere on social media - warm fuzzy posts of people with their mothers, thanking their mothers, acknowledging them. i don't care about a present, as there's nothing i need, but it would have been nice if the child would have at least wished me happy mother's day and maybe brought me a coffee at some point. or posted a picture of us together and said happy mother's day on instagram or facebook. but no. i got nothing. and i have to admit that hurts more than i would have imagined it would. and i honestly wish it didn't. but there you have it. it's undoubtedly compounded by my sister being there to visit our mother and realizing for the first time that mom doesn't really know who she is. we knew that day would come, but i find it genuinely distressing to hear that that day is now. in all, not the best mother's day ever. and not the best way to end an otherwise glorious weekend.

montage and the edge of madness

oh the joys of middle age. little fragments of memory loss, borne of waning hormones and days filled with too many tasks, emails and the relentless onslaught of news. names elude, words are just out of reach. and it's all terrifying in light of mom's alzheimer's. but, i console myself that it's likely not that, at least not yet. it's the times we live in - it's the relentlessness of being always online and the 24-hour news cycle. something has to fill it all, so like an eisenstein montage, it all keeps flashing before us, inundating our brains, filling them to overflow, impulses, ideas, stories, images, names flitting by, our brains can hardly sort it all. it's no wonder we can't remember things in detail. there's surely an element of wilful forgetting in it. who can take so much? the brain blocks some of it off to keep us safe and away from the edge of madness. and yet, we hang there, swinging out over the precipice, wondering if the pendulum will swing back.

* * *

the herring hunt

over-dramatised and badly-acted, but charming nonetheless.

but you gotta like the western girl.

* * *

this thought-provoking piece in the new yorker
where does the mind end and the world begin?
andy clark has some thoughts on that.

* * *

stories can change the world.

it's mom's birthday

my mom turns 79 today. my sister went to her assisted living yesterday and did a whole shebang. mom's sister was there, there was music, there was cake - it was a celebration. reports suggest that mom enjoyed herself thoroughly, which warms my heart in these times when i wonder what her quality of life is through the fog of her alzheimer's. and i feel very far away. mostly because i am very far away. and i have some ambivalence about that - it can be good and bad, sometimes at the same time.

these photos of mom are from the late 1950s. she was a member of the class of 1957 (of musical fame) and these must have been shortly after her graduation, when she was working at the sioux falls argus leader. her father had been an editor there for 30+ years, so she got a job there as well, even though he died when she was 16. she was a typesetter, but i think in these photos, she was a markets reporter. there must have been several photoshoots, since she's not wearing the same clothes in all the photos, nor is her hair quite the same. i suspect she trimmed it herself. and she never really stopped doing that.

i look at these and i wonder who she was? i'm not sure we ever really know our parents, they are kind of strangers to us. what goes on their heads? what life did they have before we came along? what dreams did she have? what did she like to do? what did she think of her job? did she like it? it seems obvious she laughed at work and enjoyed it, and i'd like to believe it wasn't just for the camera. i think the cameraman was wilmer. i don't remember his last name, but i remember visiting his smoked-filled house frequently as a child. he made the most amazing photographic new year's cards every year. they weren't christmas cards, as i recall him not believing in god, which was pretty out there for someone from sioux falls in the 1970s (probably even more so today). he was a real photographer - i remember his small house in sioux falls - his wife helen's fish pond in a very eclectic back yard and stacks of photos balanced precariously on card tables in the living room. even in my childish memories, he was a real character and probably one of the first intellectuals i was exposed to. in my memory, those new year's cards were a bit surreal and dali-esque. always with a clock on them, to signify time passing. i hope there are some in a box somewhere in the house, i'd like to see them again, to see if they match my memories.

it seems appropriate to stroll through my own memories as hers fade away. i am struck by the sorrow of her becoming even more of a stranger, that who she was and who she is are ever more unreachable by me. in this last photo, i look at her hands and i see my own hands, but otherwise, i don't find myself in her. maybe i see a hint of myself in that collar bone and in the freckles on her arm. but otherwise, she is and will undoubtedly remain, a mystery to me.

happy 79th birthday mom. you are your own, to the very end.

stitching identity :: kgb museum vilnius

we had three teenagers with us in lithuania, so we told them we had to visit a museum. after perusing a swedish brochure we found at our rented apartment, they chose the museum of genocide victims, mostly due to its other name - the KGB museum, owing to the fact that it is housed in the former KGB headquarters (look at me, capitalizing KGB...hmm, i'll have to ponder that) of the soviet state of lithuania.

it's a moodily-lit place, in keeping with its sober subject, and has a big focus on the lithuanian patriots/revolutionaries who resisted the soviet yoke, especially in the decade after stalin and hitler sealed their fate without consulting them in a secret agreement in the early days of the second world war. the green cells in the basement, where prisoners were held, interrogated and tortured and then, quite literally, taken out back and shot, were stark.

but i think it was most struck by the stitched objects on display. most were made by prisoners who had been exiled to camps in siberia. they obviously used scraps of fabric and thread that were at hand. stitching to hold onto their homes, loved ones and traditions. and the stitched items were made by both men and women, both having a need to cling to their home and memories.

the sign said that this little black striped pouch contained some lithuanian soil and that the prisoner had kept it with him throughout his confinement in a siberian hard labor camp. i have a jar of stones from south dakota, where i grew up, so i could relate to this. we have a need to hold onto something tangible of where we come from.

some of the stitched cloths were large and all were beautiful. each stitch holding a memory of home and comfort and family. such beauty coming out of such adversity. it's amazing.

it was also a way of keeping their religion and belief alive, as sometimes the cloths were used in religious rituals and at holidays, like easter, which they surely practiced at great peril.

there were other objects, made of materials at hand - birchbark containers and the like, but i found the stitching most fascinating. especially since it wasn't just women who were stitching, but men as well, in a human need to hold onto beauty and home.

there were many pouches, which surely held precious mementos, like the wrapped-up soil of home or a photo of loved ones or a locket. there were also sayings, carefully stitched in lithuanian, a way of physically holding onto language and culture. each stitch a small act of defiance against the oppression, each stitch a way to hold onto an identity that was being torn away.

and i wonder if my soft guns aren't a similar way of coping with the sense that my very foundation has been ripped away by that ridiculous clown that cheated and colluded his way into the white house, robbing me of any pride i may have had in being american. maybe not, but they are definitely an act of defiance and mocking of the gun culture that has so strongly taken hold. not as deep as the items in the genocide victims museum, but a small act against the regime nonetheless.

stitches, objects and memories

ever since working on cleaning out our mother's house, i've been pondering things. the things we collect, stockpile, accumulate over a lifetime. the mundane things - bowls in which we serve dinner, glasses for milk, ceramic bulldogs, socks, tea towels...

i had some breakable glasses wrapped in the tea towel above for the trip home. the glasses are cheery ones from the 50s - with a pink check and a gold rim. i didn't notice that this tea towel had a careful hand-stitched repair of a hole until i went to iron it yesterday. and i welled up. mom must have sat down with it and carefully stitched a fine little oval-shaped patch into place. i find myself wondering when she did it. she couldn't have done it today. she's losing her words for things like needles and thread and while her fingers might remember how to make careful stitches, i'm not certain her mind could any longer make the connections necessary to do so. what made this particular towel worthy of repair? it is a nice, soft towel of the kind that are hard to find these days - the kind that actually absorbs water and which is soft enough to clean your glasses on and have them end up clean. that's part of why i used it to wrap up the glasses, i knew i would appreciate using it when i got home.

mom's house is full of objects and we donated, gave away, threw away and burned a great many of them. but there were things here and there that i wanted to save and take home - like these glasses and this tea towel. i'm not sure what to make of my choices. i don't particularly remember the glasses from my childhood. i think they are something she collected at a flea market in the years after i left home, so there aren't memories attached to them. but still, they spark joy (a factor my sister swears by after reading the marie kondo book). and it means something to have brought them home with me, across half a continent and an ocean. i feel comforted when i use them.

it is, in many ways, a situation without much comfort, this losing your mother to alzheimer's. i have been able to read about it a little bit now, but still haven't found anything that i feel like is the book i need. i think i deal mostly by avoidance. i don't call her much, because it brings it to the surface, hearing her repeat the same stories - the relocation of her cats to another zip code (as she puts it), the evil people who took her driver's license tho' she wasn't hurting anyone, the whereabouts of her (multiple!) guns - hearing her search for words and stumble around in her decreasing vocabulary. it's too raw and distressing. so i seek comfort in drinking my gin and tonic from cheery glasses she chose or fingering the mended stitches on a tea towel. and it hits me that the tea towel could have been my grandmother's and the stitches hers. and she also had alzheimer's and was eventually erased. leaving behind a mended tea towel, that i muse over at my own desk in my home in denmark, so far from where the stitches were stitched. and i wonder if objects can be repositories of memory. and if it will also happen to me...

* * *

speaking of memory and objects, matisse found joy in things as well.

* * *

an interesting piece on alzheimer's as a women's issue in the lenny letter.

the end of an era

today was a fateful day. mom failed the test to keep her driver's license. and she failed it with flying colors. it's the end of an era for her. she's been driving for a good 60 years. and what a change it will be. to be able to get into the car and go somewhere has been the hallmark of her life. once upon a time, she picked up and drove herself to a new job and a new life in the black hills, moving away from her mother, her home and her job in sioux falls for the first time. on another occasion, she drove herself to a new life together with my father when he bought a little weekly newspaper in his hometown. and from there, whenever she needed to get away, she got in her car. she drove us countless miles to horse shows and a couple of times to visit her sister in oregon. she was fearless at the wheel, if distracted, the dashboard covered in glasses cases, kleenex and donut crumbs. when my sister and i fought, she stuck my sister over to her left on the broad bench seat of the old brown pickup and separated us. seat belts be damned. those were the times. and it ended ok.

she must feel devastated. i can't even imagine. even she, from within her fog, must know that that is significant. for the first time in this experience, i feel genuine sorrow for her. this changes everything. she can no longer escape. and neither can we.

paranoia and pistols

i try to call mom and she doesn't answer the phone. i guess she's still mad at me for supposedly taking her glasses (which were found, there in her house). i also apparently took that big picture of dad that she puts in the chair with a stuffed cat and a blanket and talks to. but that too was found on her dining table. and does she express remorse for her accusations? apparently not, she experiences only the immediate joy of being reunited with her precious possessions.

was this paranoia and thinking the worst of others always there in my mother or is it the disease? and why me? because i was the last one there, visiting her? perhaps she associates me with the glasses because i was the one who found them for her, stuffed into a paper bag in their cases, just before i left, so i was imprinted on her mind along with them. or maybe, all of the furniture from her basement that has peopled my various apartments and which was freely and generously given by her, has imprinted me on her brain as the one who comes and takes things away. maybe this is why she can hurl wild accusations of her thieving daughter around. and i can't say that they don't hurt, even while i know they're not true. who is this person and who does she think i am?

it's this paranoia and thinking the worst of people that made me worry about all the guns in that house. her expired permit to carry a concealed weapon (incidentally not a photo id) was on the table in the living room, but that didn't stop her from loading two heavy bowling ball-sized bags full of guns and ammo into her car the other day (turns out she had a new permit there among her stacks of mail). i don't know what she was planning to do with them, but i had visions of her shooting her  beautiful granddaughter in a haze of paranoia one day. and it takes my breath away to even write that. that said, i have also laughed hysterically over my pistol-pakkin' mama. if you're not laughing, you're crying with this disease.

the guns are packed safely away now, so the horror scenario that flashed across my mind isn't going to happen. but undoubtedly many others will with this cruel disease. i have to grow a thicker skin.

i don't know what i expected

my, what a couple of weeks it has been. fevers, coughing, snowy nights in a hot tub out on a deck in the black hills, presents, cooking, food, games, skiing, snowboarding, a broken wrist, an infected jaw that's been building for some time (since a couple of weeks before the november 8 election debacle), two miserable flights in acute pain, lack of sleep, kindness, laughter, and sorrow. the whole gamut of emotions. and i am wrung out. it's somehow fitting that it all ended in a raging, painful infection in my jaw. i've always held my stress in my jaws, grinding my teeth at night. old habits die hard.

i don't know what i expected. i was apprehensive before we left, knowing that it was likely the last christmas where mom would remember us. but i had no idea how advanced it had become. the repetition of stories, i could handle and even enjoy to a degree, impressed at what she remembered (she remembers leaving us there by the side of the road near wasta and even remembered (which i didn't) that she needed water for an over-heated radiator). the constant asking where we were going and what we were doing next, just after we had explained it was slightly more exasperating. but, i could understand that this was how her mind now works.

and then there were the moments of spiteful anger that came seemingly from nowhere. so much venom over insignificant things - mostly in the form of harsh judgements in the retelling of events. either traditional views on the role of women and men rearing their head, or just plain judgemental nastiness. that was hard.

i keep wanting to write "but most distressing was..." and then thinking that the thing i'm going to write isn't the worst thing. but it was very distressing that when we gently tried to speak with her about how she probably shouldn't be driving anymore or that she doesn't need three vehicles, or that the big house might be too much for her (she has every surface covered in junk mail, so there is nowhere to sit or have a cup of tea and we couldn't stay there, tho' we did try one night), she steadfastly refused to admit or recognize that she even has a problem. this may be a symptom of the disease, but it also may be who she is.

but what might be the most distressing are the lies she tells. she forgot the christmas presents she had bought for all of us (matching slippers for 8), when we went to the cabin and every day the story changed as to where they were. sometimes it was our fault because we didn't take the vehicle she had loaded them into, expecting we'd take it. when we got home, they were right there on the couch, where they'd been, she'd never loaded them at all. she also took back her sewing machine, which had been lent to the child, taking it when no one was home. she venomously spat at me, when i asked her about it, that she had needed to use it herself. this despite the fact that she had left the cord behind and couldn't have plugged it in. i never did find it in her house, so i'm not sure where it is.

she was stopped by the police yesterday, 45 miles from home, driving 25 with the windows open (despite it being bitterly cold) and with the dome light on. wearing slippers. it's unclear whether they took her license or recommended that she be evaluated (i'm not clear on the procedure, but it's clear that we need to take those three cars away from her. pronto. apparently, this morning's lie is that she had to go to on a trip on such a cold day because i took all of her glasses with me when i left. the truth of that one is that we spent half an hour helping her find them on the day before we left and when i last saw her, she was sitting in my dad's chair, opening all of the glasses cases and burbling happily over her collection. it was a strange goodbye.

i'll allow that maybe they're not lies - they're the gossamer holding her thoughts together.  so perhaps they shouldn't upset me. but right now they do. it's a bit like this disease has amplified all of her worst traits - the solipsism, the selfishness, the lack of caring one iota about her grandchildren (which has always been a source of pain). they are all dialed up to full volume, replacing all of the things i loved about my mom - her willingness to drop everything and go off and have fun, to try new things, to buy a lot of tricked-out gear for a hobby and jump wholeheartedly into it. her enjoyment of good food. on christmas, when asked if she wanted to come and have some dinner, she said, "that depends on what it is," after i had worked all day, cooking the most beautiful beef wellington i've ever prepared. that day ended in a flood tears for me. it was all too much. and while i logically know that it's the disease and not my mother, it's very hard to separate and hard not to be hurt.

it is a crazy hurtful disease and it's only the beginning for us. i haven't even come close to getting a handle on how i feel about it.

note: i'm choosing to share the journey we've only just begun with alzheimer's here on my blog, as honestly as i can, because of one of the things i read was what we must speak it out loud. but also because this blog has always been where i work out what i think and feel and i've encountered no bigger topic where i have need for that. i by no means want to hang my mother out to dry and i realize i'm walking a fine line in that, but i know i'm not the first person to go through this and i hope that my journey can spark a positive conversation on a difficult topic. that said, i am no expert and have only just begun to read about the disease, trying to learn more. all opinions and thoughts on the disease are my own and from my own very limited experience. if you have any thoughts/readings/resources/experiences to share, please share them. this is all very raw and new for me and i want to grow in understanding and compassion.

ruin porn :: the beauty and the sadness

we explored this old house four years ago when we were here. i'm thinking a lot about decay these days - there is beauty in it, but also sadness and sorrow. think of the memories, lying dormant in these peeling walls - memories of children's laughter and running footsteps, of family meals, of fights and prayers and love and frustrations, triumphs and tragedies. this house was surely a witness to it all, a silent, stoic, untelling witness.