a drive in the country
In my memories Fall always arrives with a brisk cool wind the first weekend in October. This Saturday was true to form. It was cool enough for a long sleeve shirt when I finally got up. I was tired from working late and staying up late the last two days. I would have liked to have spent the day working outside but I had already prmised to visit my mom.
When we arrived at the nursing home my mother was talking about her "poppa." We decided to take her out for a ride in the country, back to the farm where she grew up.
The countryside was golden. All of the fields were filled with goldenrod. Mom did not recognize anything along the roadway but she always enjoys a drive. We had picked up some sandwiches and had a picnic in the big oak grove next to the old cemetary. That was the one place mom recognized. For years she has gone to picnics and reunions in the old oak grove.
Sometimes she has more memory than others. Saturday I think she thought I was her brother. When we got back to the nursing home she did not recognize where she was.
She seems to have adapted to living there reasonably well. She talks to the other ladies and their families. The conversations are a mixture of reality and the fantasies of various people. Mom thinks she is staying in a hotel most of the time but she does not know how she got there.
that is such a horrible disease!!! They can be perfectly Lucid one minute and then not know who, what where when or how..
Posted by: mary lou at October 6, 2004 12:37 PMMy mom suffers from memory loss and my family has know for the last 12 years that mom's memory is failing. the upside is that we have been able to keep mom active both physically and mentally ...as with you mother, when she is holding a conversation it is a mixture of the past and present, and maybe a confession of some unknow fact from her youth.
Like your wife, my sister and I are quilters and get together often to sew. Mom knows when I come over that we will head to the sewing room and her job will be to press as we sew.
Mom is very good with a structured enviroment and we feel extremly bless that she has retained her pleasant personally.
