Mom's Therapy

As you might have read in my previous bog posts, my Mom has Alzheimer's.She will be 87 on January 30,2013.  The greatest change has come over her in the past few months. Some days she has minutes of being her usual self, but in a twinkling of an eye, she is totally lost as to whom we(her children) are, or where she is.Rita and I are constantly trying to think of ways to occupy her mind, since speaking of family only makes her worse. We simply must avoid any mention of other family members in our conversations. It's hard to do, since so much of our lives have evolved around our family in years past,but now that most of her children have abandoned her, we try not to mention any of their names.Most days,she does not even think she has children, much less know their names, but on occasion she is coherent, and speaks of them.
She made an attempt at several different types of crafts,but most seem to get her discouraged because she cannot master them.This day, she tried her hand at painting.since coloring pictures was too complicated. She got frustrated because she could not see well enough to stay in the lines.I tried to find the type of markers that only colored inside the lines, but found I had bought the wrong type.  I'll try again to find the set I had in mind.Free style painting seemed to appeal to her somewhat, although I think she only tried it to please us.She painted 2 pages before tiring of that.

When I am staying over with Mom, I always  try to bring something to do,myself.I find great pleasure in making these trays which I use a lot in my craft room back at my home.They are pretty and they hold lots of supplies,plus they are shallow, thus letting me see what is inside, without a lot of digging through boxes.I get to use up bits and pieces of my pretty fabric. I even made one to hold Mom's cards and letters.She loves bright colors, so I think she likes it.Cards and letters are on her mind a lot these days. She worries constantly(on good days) that we are not keeping up with sending folks Thank You cards for all of the nice things they do for her.Her church family has been wonderful,after they heard of Mom's rapid decline.They take turns visiting her and cheering her up. Most times, if she does know them, which is not often,she forgets an hour later that they were even there.We have plans of taking pictures of her visitors, just to convince her they were truly there. She is convinced we are fabricating stories of visitors dropping by.

Seeing Mom decline in this manner is hard, but we do get to hear lots of her stories of her youth on good days, but even those stories, she is convinced, were made up and not true when she hears them retold. We have heard 90 per cent of these stories our entire lives, so we feel they are as truthful as anyone can be,when remembering occurrences from their childhood.She has even filled in a few more minor details in some of her stories, that even I had not heard, and I have heard those stories many times.Whether they are totally factual or not,there is no one left to corroborate them. Most everyone from those days of Mom's youth, have passed on.I hope to pass some of her stories along in some of my upcoming posts,but now I must spend many of my days, attending to her needs.The stories will have to wait a little longer.