My dad had passed away several months before and although Mom at first had gone to visit different family members out of state, a son and her only living, much younger sister, it was not uplifting her spirits any that I could see. They took her places she had never been and she enjoyed it somewhat but she had arthritis pretty bad and told me secretly she would like to just stay home awhile and rest. I was familiar with her pain and understood, but Mom was not acting normal. I know my dad’s death had hurt her of course, but he had lived longer than doctors had given him after a bypass surgery years ago, and now all the months he was home with her trying to help him recover from a stroke, I guess it had finally just been more than she could take. She seemed depressed at times and lost in space at others.

She had had that far off look when I was a young child though, it was like she was looking right through what her eyes were directed at. She had beautiful hazel eyes and I loved to watch her and wonder what she was thinking. All seven of us children got Dad’s brown eyes although one brother and I got a touch of greenish gold mixed in; the others were very dark like Dads.

Mom had never worked and was at my dad’s beck and call all the years they were married, but since his stroke I think she had been so worn down she let anyone else who would, take over that job, but I could tell it bothered her. She felt guilt knowing he only wanted her and he of course was not thinking clearly to know she couldn’t keep up this pace, now in her seventies. They had been married over fifty years and had seven children, and she was from the old school of the man is the boss, although he knew not to push that too far especially as they grew older and they got along so well the last few years, even with Dad in his wheelchair. I caught him a time or two making passes at her when he didn’t know I was around, but Mom did know I was, and it would embarrass her but she would just slap at him, laugh and walk away and believe me I would disappear too. This was not something I was use to between my parents. Like many people I am sure, I could not put parents and sex in the same thought frame, even if there were seven of us. It was something I never even wanted to imagine!

I had known when Mom lost her helper VA had paid for, the one who had stolen her belongings, done no work but always showed up for payday, that Mom had been informed she could have anyone she wanted although she had been led to believe before it could not be family, she knew now it could be, and she had always wanted me. Since I can remember I was the one she trusted and wanted, knowing she would get what she asked for with no worries. She could at last rest. She gave me all the information over the phone but she did not ask me to come back home but it was what she wanted and I knew it. I knew Mom better than anyone. I could even tell when she was telling a fib. I called her on whatever it was she had told me as being a fib once, something one of my brothers had put her up to for his benefit. I even told her how I knew and she laughed and said she would have to remember and watch that. She would start sniffling and rubbing her nose. I don’t know how I knew, I just did, but I had been with my Mom so many years and loved her so much and adored her as a child. Mom had always turned to me knowing she could always count on me.

We had had a long separation when my children were babies and I was at home with them not really having a desire to go anywhere but twice my husband had wanted a few days vacation in St Augustine, Florida our favorite vacation place at that time, before it became new and improved. It is still his favorite but I just loved the way it was best. Mom kept my babies and I worried so I could hardly enjoy myself, they loved her as much as she did them but I admit I was overprotective and I could see Mom letting them explore as she had me and my brothers when we were young out in the woods up and down trees, looking for tadpoles and frogs, but that was silly of me, we weren’t babies then, she wouldn’t let them get hurt and she didn’t but other than those two trips I rarely left my kids anywhere and if they begged to spend the night with a set of grandparents we usually were called before bedtime, they wanted to come home. My little girl was thirteen months younger than her brother and a little sassy, so my in-laws favored my son over the years and he became a buddy for their handicapped son Timmy, that doctors had said would always be childlike, so the last time my little girl stayed with them with her brother they were about three and four years old. She kept throwing candy papers in the floor and they had to keep making her pick them up so finally they told her she couldn’t come back if she didn’t mind them and she said, “So what, I don’t want to be here anyway!”

They did laugh when they told us about it but she was serious and although I don’t find humor in children back talking adults I was always so irritated at my in-laws for letting my kids have all the junk food they could hold, no matter how I pleaded for them not to. But that was how it went from there on and my daughter was ok with that, meaning what she said and preferring to stay at my Moms’ for her fun away from home, but my son kept going to my in-laws because they spoiled him so, until he was a teen and although as considerate of Timmy as he could be he outgrew wanting to go there so much and I was so glad, because no matter how much I fussed or argued with them they let him pig out on junk food every time he went there and he always came home sick, throwing up and stomach aches and had stomach problems up into his adulthood and has even admitted himself that he knew it would hurt him but he couldn’t resist, there was always so much and no one said no. Amazingly it did not make him overweight but only because there were long periods he did not get to go there though they lived only a couple miles from us. They could have easily said, “Your Mom doesn’t want you having junk food but she won’t mind if you don’t eat so much it makes you sick.” It was a losing battle though. Therefore I think that’s why that one sassy episode my baby daughter gave them always stuck in my mind and tickled me and I still laugh about because I did resent the battles I was forced to have with them and they were so extravagant with my son buying him whatever he asked for, name brand things I could not afford although my children where always dressed well, but more so because they totally ignored my daughter and this seemed so childish to me and unfair showing such a difference in the two. My kids looked like twin girls for about the first five years of their lives, everyone who didn’t know better thought so. Mom knew my son preferred staying with his other grandparents and why and understood his special closeness with Timmy and the benefit it was for this handicapped child/adult who was not in school to make friends, but she still loved him and he loved her. I wonder sometimes if everyone does really grow up. I was so thankful my parents and especially Mom brought us up as she did, to not be selfish or thoughtless but that was my Mom, and I’m sure she remembered all the years I was more than her little girl but did my best to make her life easier.

When Mom had her last baby, the next oldest was almost three and he became mine. Well, not really, but in this six year olds mind that was how it was. My two older siblings were four and seven years older than me and I can hardly remember them as children. We never went to the same schools, my brother, seven years older started working as soon as he could, besides going to school and my sister was just never home. She apparently did not like helping out nor was forced to and to this day I don’t know why she was allowed to always be gone, but we did know her friends and the one she stayed with all the time had no sister and being four years younger I don’t think my sister ever thought of me as a sister, the closeness of one for sure was not there. We liked her best friend though, in fact I liked her better than my sister, she was nicer to me and her mother had a nervous disorder, although I was too young to understand anything like that so many years ago I did go to her house with my sister a time or two, probably Mom insisted, making sure she was going there, who knows? Her Mom was so extremely thin and always shaking and I didn’t want to embarrass my sister’s friend so I tried not to stare and I never asked anyone about it, but it was like two sets of children to me at my house, the second hatch starting with me and going down two years apart and with me being the oldest I felt like the second mother. I was small always and the second oldest baby was born big so he wasn’t easy to handle but I did, I was tough having all those brothers and I slept with him in his big baby bed. He was big and tough so I couldn’t hurt him and of course I could climb in and out of his bed but not help him in or out and I don’t remember that I ever diapered him but perhaps he was trained by then. I do remember trying to diaper my youngest tiny baby brother though and almost pulled his naval cord loose where they had that gauze like forever until it fell off? Ugh. So that and bumping his head once just kept me far away from him, he was too delicate for me, adorable as he was, as a little girl, I feared I had almost killed him twice and that was enough, and felt lucky he wasn’t dead and would never take another chance. I never told Mom about this until I was grown and had kids, I was good with the other three younger than me though and Mom was so smart getting work done that was really just fun to us.

We had hard wood floors and Mom was a Friday cleaner and every Friday those floors were cleaned and waxed and polished. I don’t know how we kept from breaking something (like a leg or an arm) but we never did. She gave us old socks and it took awhile, started out with socks on hands and feet for it to become really slick, with the rule being we couldn’t miss a spot. It was a tough beginning but worth the effort for all the fun we would have and the smell was so good. Dad was the authority in the family, the threat if a wrong was done, but he worked until midnight when we were all asleep so we could get a little wild when he wasn’t around and Mom whistled and sang as she worked and as long as no one fought the noise didn’t bother her. We hated when it was over and we couldn’t keep skating all night. Mom whistled and sang above it all. She seemed to always be happy. This was early in the evening I’m sure because Friday and Saturday nights were treat nights, either popcorn, fudge, sea foam or penuche candy with whatever the popular Friday night show was then. This was the only times we got sweets except special Sunday occasions with company or holidays, and if there was going to be a weekend sweet planned for dessert we always got popcorn for the treat, which was fine to us. There was always plenty. We never felt poor or jealous of anyone we knew of who had more.

Mom was the best cook in the world and the best Mom. I think she put a joy in all of us that gave the most of us a good sense of humor and love of life through all our trials. I had grown to love my dad over the years instead of just fearing him and our last days together healed a split that could have kept me from ever really knowing him. He was gone now though and I had to do what I could to keep my cheerful mother from slipping away. My mother-in-law had a disease called Alzheimer’s and although mom was nothing like that yet it worried me that maybe this was something all old people were getting now or always had but hadn’t had a name until now. Maybe her doctor could give her a test and I wouldn’t have to worry about this anymore. Maybe it was just a depression of some sort.

I go in with her to visit with the doctor she has been seeing for years and ask him does he think she could be getting Alzheimer’s. He looks at her and says “What do you think of your daughter asking that in front of you?” What a question. To this day I do not see his point. Mom says she knows something is different, something is not right, she doesn’t know what, but it doesn’t bother her what ever I want to ask him, she knows I only ask because I care and want to help. I was so pleased to hear her tell him that. What did he think? He doesn’t give an opinion or a prescription. He knows I am taking her home with me south and she will have a new doctor and he more or less says let them decide. I read his face.

I know that’s what he thinks, that she does have Alzheimer’s. Was it something so bad you don’t tell the patient? What was it really? I had to find out in a hurry, I would save my Mom; I wouldn’t let this take her away from me. There was a cure for everything wasn’t there? Her insurance was good. I had seen to that years ago, that she had a secondary that paid all that Medicare didn’t. She knew something was wrong, that was a good sign wasn’t it? She would help me. She had beat cancer twice and neither of those had brought her down as bad as they scared her, she still had her melodies, and this would be the same. A tough fight but she would win. She still knew me, unlike my mother-in-law, but I wasn’t around all the years my mother-in-law may have been getting as bad as she had gotten, maybe someone could have helped her if she had had more than my father-in-law who seemed to care no more for her than she did him and their son that could only think of himself for the most part although to be fair he did look after his mom the best he could, there would be no getting any helpful information from him. So now I needed answers and what was I to expect, what was best for me to do? Alzheimer’s…was it a killer? If so…of the body or just the brain or both?