I’m the black sheep of my family, but not because I did drugs or got knocked up, but because I went to college and landed a professional job. Oh, yeah, and that whole Pagan thing, but that’s not really part of this story.
My parents never knew what to make of my intellectual ambitions, or how to interact with me after I went to college. Our conversations revolved around meals or their friends–they never understood what I was saying. And this is more than just “my parents don’t understand me” this was me talking about post-colonial theory and their eyes glazing over.
Due to a whole bunch of teenage emotional crap, and four years of college heartache, and absolute family hell while in graduate school, I stopped speaking to my family for two years. I was able to get therapy and deal with a lot of my issues. We have a tenuous relationship now. I visit them every few months, and I talk to them on the phone occasionally. We still can’t have a conversation. My mother asks me how my commute is, and what my friends are doing. My father complains about his work and my mother. It’s not a great relationship, but it’s the only one I’m likely to have. It’s taken me a while, but I’m accepting of it. I know my parents can’t give me any more, even if they wanted to. I haven’t been close to my parents in ages.
My father called me today. He never calls me. I called home and talked to my mother, and she sounded pretty good, but said my father was at work, so I called him there. He asked me if my mother had told me about her doctor’s visit, and I said no. He told me that she’d finally seen a doctor and gotten an official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and she’s now taking Aricept. My brothers and I have been thinking she’s had Alzheimer’s for the past 5 years–her mind constantly wanders, and she forgets everything. Last week I called home to speak to my brother, and my mother asked me how my commute was at least 5 times in a three minute conversation. We’ve noticed little things like that, and we’ve suspected it, but to finally have the diagnosis is a little scary. My mother’s brother and one of her sisters have Alzheimer’s. And my mother is only 65.
One reason I never got along with my mother is that she has very little personality. She never had any hobbies, or any real friends. She enjoys gossip, and doing word search puzzles, but now she forgets the words she already found. We never had anything to talk about while I was growing up. And now, she forgets the things she asked me five minutes ago.
Basically, I’m scared that Alzheimer’s runs in my mother’s family. I *think* her mother had it, too, but all anyone has ever said is that Grandma L. was “sick.”
I’m scared for me and my brothers. My mother is the only one of her Alzheimer’s-diagnosed siblings to have children. However, I can take comfort in a few things. Uncle T, Aunt G and my mother are all/were all sedentary. They had very few interests or activities. They didn’t engage their brain. They stopped trying. They stopped living. When Aunt G retired, she basically shut down. Uncle T came back from WWII and decided to be a hermit in the mountains–he never traveled further south than Concord, NH. And my mother never had a life of her own.
As scared as I am for my brothers and myself, I think we have a few positives for us. I dance and write and do crossword puzzles and sudoku. My brothers are also active–they have friends, my youngest brother is in the military. We also have the knowledge of what is happening to our mother and we can look out for each other. And there’s always the medical advances that haven’t happened yet.
This evening I went out for dinner and drinks with friends, and tomorrow I’m off to New York. I’m going to continue my active life, and keep my brain engaged, and help out my father as much as I can, given our tenuous relationship. I’m going to keep on living– what else is there to do?
