LOSING IT

My dear 87 year old mother calls me on the phone every few days to tell me that she is losing her marbles.
We enjoy repetitive conversations about her finances, insurance policies, supposedly missing checks and just about anything else that preys on her mind during the small hours of the morning.
Now, I should tell you that my mother has always been the sharpest knife in the drawer. You couldn’t get anything past her as a kid. She possessed an all-seeing eye, an acerbic tongue, a sarcastic sense of humor, and the ability to look right through you and see just what it was you were hiding. There was no fooling her; she was smart, on top of the world and nobody’s fool.
When I talk to her now and she is full of doubt, vague worries, and the dreadful sense that she is sliding down the slippery slope towards dementia, well, it fills me with a clammy fear – and not just for her, but for me as well. For after all, if life can take down this rock of a woman, what’s it going to do to her most flawed offspring?
I was standing by the kitchen sink telling my wife that I was worried about my mom losing it. Since Rochelle is a Physical Therapist who works quite often with geriatric patients she had an interesting perspective.
“Your mother may be slipping a few gears,” she said. “But the fact that she thinks she is losing ground is really a sign that she still has it together.”
“How so?”
“Believe me, the people who are losing their minds think they are fine. If you can tell you are slipping, that means that you’re still fairly cogent.”
I don’t know,” I said. “My mom is pretty confused.”
“Is she wrapping potatoes in Reynolds Aluminum Wrap and shoving them in the microwave to bake?”
“No.”
“Does she mistake her daughter for her favorite sister, 20 plus years deceased?”
“Well, no.”
“Has she smeared fecal matter in her hair?”
“Good God, no!”
“Then, trust me, she’s not losing it.”
“Is this the new litmus test of mental acuity; have you given yourself a shit shampoo lately? If the answer is no, then you’re still with it. But if your answer is yes, then you probably don’t remember it anyway.”
“It’s a lot to look forward to, isn’t it?”
“I can tell that I’m slipping,” I confessed, because I live in Universe Jeff, where it is always all about me, all of the time.
“Yeah, well, you’re probably not the best barometer of mental stability.”
“I spent all last week looking for my reading glasses.”
“Are we going to go through that again?”
“I thought I had left them at the gym and I was pestering the people there every day asking them if anybody had turned them in. And all the time they were in….”
“The laundry basket,” she said. “I know; I’m the one who found them, remember?”
“Right, the laundry basket. I must have looked through that basket at least three times, because I knew that I had laid my jacket on it when I ….”
“Came home from the gym,” she said and she was tapping her foot in the impatient way that she has when someone obtuse is really annoying her.
“Right, but how did I miss them?”
“No doubt one of the enduring mysteries of the world.”
“And remember when I had that bright idea to take all our spare keys and hide them.”
“In case robbers broke in while we were on a ski trip,” she said. Her jaw was making a peculiar motion, like she was grinding her teeth.
“You’re doing that funny thing again with your jaw,” I told her.
“Golly, wonder why?” And she stopped doing it. I am really helpful in correcting her imperfections that way.
“And so what happened with all those keys?” I asked her.
“They all disappeared!” she said and slapped her forehead in mock wonder.
“That’s right! Exactly! I put them all in that special hiding place and we spent the next 2 years trying to remember where.”
“Not us, you. You spent the next 2 years trying to find them. I always assumed that some super-smart robbers slipped in here while we were in Beaver Creek and stole our spare keys just to mess with your head.”
“You’re not pretty when you are being sarcastic,” I told her, and not for the first time. I’m a saint to stay in this marriage.
“What could I possibly have to be sarcastic about? You’re convinced because you’re mom is slipping a gear or two, that you must be losing your mind too. But hey, Planet Earth to Planet Jeffrey, she is 87 and you are 57!”
“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be happening. I’m losing stuff all the time. I could be suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s.”
Man, now I was really depressed. I saw a bleak landscape stretching in front of me; the Rest of My Life, lived in diapers, drooling, not knowing my children from my siblings. I felt a spasm of tightness like an electrical current glance across my chest and whereas normally this brief pain would have caused me to worry about having a cardiac event – and me only 57, it’s not fair, I tell ya! – now, it felt vaguely reassuring. I mean, who wouldn’t take a quick exit through a seismic shift in your left ventricle, rather than facing decades of embarrassing dementia? Sign me up in a heartbeat.
“And if you do have Alzheimer’s, Darling, won’t it be extra special for me as I get to change your poopy diapers?” She said this in a sweet voice but her jaw was starting to grind away again.
“That’s not even funny,” I told her.
“No, it certainly is not,” she said as she turned to leave the room. “Oh, and if you’re not doing anything this afternoon, why don’t you look for the spare keys? You haven’t turned the house upside down since I found your glasses while doing the laundry.”
And so I was left to contemplate the inevitable slide into the grave. First my mother would lose her mind, and then she would die. Then I would lose my mind and then I would die.
It was enough to make a strong man weep, this slow unwinding of the funeral shroud before my mind’s eye.
It was at this critical juncture that the most well-balanced of the sentient beings in Chez Finn sauntered into the kitchen, her nose testing the air for a scent of food.
“Got your dawber down?” asked Kebu the Akita.
“My mom is losing her mind, and I am dying,” I told my dog while I scratched her velveteen ears absently.
A rumbling growl deep in her throat signaled her contentment with the ear rub.
“A piece of your home-made Biscotti would brighten your outlook, I am sure,” said the dog.
“You’re probably right,” I agreed and opened the cookie jar. “I’ll bet you’d like one too.”
“Well, now that you mention it, sure, why not?”
We stood there chewing thoughtfully on our Biscotti. “Life ever get you down, Kebu?”
She did that funny little cock of her head like she was listening for the sound of dangerous predators in the distance.
“I’m a dog,” she told me. “I try to live in the moment.”
“I wish I were a dog,” I said.
“That would be a disaster," Kebu said. "Who would bake our Biscotti?”
Trust a dog to keep matters in perspective.
(a note from DDD – for those of you who read this via email, check out my blog location for new paintings of the torrid twosome; view at www.dirtydiaperdad.blogspot.com)