Gunsmoke and My Funny Valentine

Walk: 1.15 miles around Antrim Lake

Time: 45 minutes including one break.

(At that rate, it would take me more than two hours to go around Green Lake.)

I was in Columbus this week visiting my mom and dad. Last week, my father called and was concerned about my mother’s lack of appetite. For about eight days, she was refusing food and ate very little. This is common behavior for the end stages of Alzheimer’s. When the body starts to shut down to die, it stops taking food and water. My father had also put my mother on hospice. Jack thought I should make the trip to support my father in case she continued not to eat.

When I walked into the Memory Care Unit on Wednesday, my mother was sitting in the dining room with her friend Kate. When she saw me, my mother smiled in recognition. She couldn’t say name, but she appeared to be delighted to see me.

“You have a wonderful mother,” Kate said.

“I agree,” I said. My mother beamed. My mother was more pleasant now that she had been a few years earlier when she was in the early stages of her disease. Before she was diagnosed, she was extremely difficult. At one point, she had told Claire Adele that she was no longer her favorite grandchild, that the Boy was now her favorite grandchild. Both of my kids cried for an hour.

“How could she say that?” they said. I didn’t have an answer, but I sat with them while they sobbed.

My mother, father and I sat in the cafeteria for an hour and a half while my father attempted to spoonfeed my mother. She was able to grasp a saltine in her hand and nibble it over the course of five minutes. She would take a bite of food once every few minutes. Sometimes she would take it, other times she looked pained as the food entered her mouth. My father would intersperse trying to feed her with giving her chocolate milk, water or Boost. The water was in a plastic cup with flowers on it with a pink lid and a straw. Effectively, my mother was a toddler, except moving in the wrong direction. I remember reading Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, where the world moved in reverse. I hope my mother's life doesn't regress to the where she is an unresponsive blob of disintegrating cells curled in the fetal position.

Dee, the caretaker, recommended not giving her crackers.

“She might choke on it,” she said. “She choked on one yesterday.” I winced. My father said she has to eat soft foods, so I was optimistic to see her eat a cracker. This disease only goes one way—downhill. Hopes dashed. After lunch, my father helped us to gracefully depart.

When I visited my dad in January, he asked what he should do with all of the stuff around the house--pillows, flowers, candles and other tchotchkes—that my mother had collected over the years.

“Bring them to her room,” I said. He did, but her collection from a four bedroom house was too large to fill her one room.

On Thursday, my father and I went to visit her again. In the guest room at my parent’s home, I found some silk tulips in a small bowl. I decided to bring her a “gift” of these flowers. I knew she would like them as she purchased them herself years earlier.

When we got to Danbury, my mom saw me coming down the hallway. She smiled and waved, excited to see me. Again, I was happy she recognized me. Eugene, one of the other residents, waved at me, too. I supposed my mother might wave at anyone coming in. like Eugene did. As my mother was wheeled closer, I handed her the flowers.

She smiled. “Oh, shoes,” she said. Most of her sentences from the day before were word salad like this.

“I am glad you like them,” I said, not bothering to correct her. “They are fabric so they will live forever.”

She laughed at my joke and I was shocked. A few minutes later, we were seated in the dining room, waiting for lunch when I sneezed.

“It must be the flowers,” I said. Again, she laughed. Did she understand what I was saying? Did she follow the timing of my remarks and assume there was a punch line? Did she not understand a word we said, but felt it was something amusing?

There was a time years ago when Jack and I were in the car, and she was in the backseat. Her hearing was in decline, and she’d often have to ask to have things repeated. I was in the middle of a funny story when she laughed. But she laughed before I got to the funny part. Jack and I looked at each with alarm. I now wondered if my mother's laughter was just part of what she was used to--not really getting it but still wanting to be a part of something.

Later, she looked at my purse. I didn't bring a real purse with me to Ohio--only my large, clumsy green backpack which can hold my laptop, a few books and a large bottle of water. My dad said my mom has dozen of purses, so I could borrow one of hers. So I did. All through lunch, she kept looking at it. My father later commented that he thought she was eyeing the bag. I agreed. Did she recognize it as hers, or did she just like it?

My mom's purse

After lunch, my father, mother and I went to my mother’s living room where there is a flat screen television above the fireplace. An old Western was on. A man in a black shirt with a black hat was yelling at a woman in a white dress. It was rather intense, and I was wondering if we should watch something else. I feared she might pick up the anger and fear and she would feel those emotions. I scanned the stack of movies on the mantle, hoping to find something more suitable as my parents continued to watch.

“This is Gunsmoke,” my father said. My mother nodded in recognition. There wasn’t much dialogue and there was lots of swelling music. A low bassoon played when the bad guy was contemplating and when Marshall Dillon was making plans to save Beth Wilson from Carl, her former beaux who just got out of prison. In the eight years since, she married Mr. Wilson and had a daughter. Now Carl was back to reclaim Beth. She wasn’t happy about his return to Dodge City.

“I bet Marshall Dillon shoots this guy in the end,” I said. My mom and dad laughed. They had seen the show before.

My father and I made fun of Beth after she bonked Carl on the head and ran to hide.

“Why is she running into the mine shaft?” my dad said. “That is the worst thing to do when being chased by a bad guy.” A minute later, Marshall Dillon shoots Carl, as I had predicted. I was gloated in my correct assumption, and again, my mother laughed. Perhaps this show with lots of actions, little dialogue, heavy emotions and rousing music was easy for her to understand and follow. In January, we watched The Lucy Show, which was all dialogue and took place more or less in Lucy's living room or her office. If you didn't understand the words, the show made no sense. You could follow this episode of Gunsmoke if you didn't speak English, which was perfect for my mother.

Another episode was coming on, but it was time for my father and I to leave. “Tell us about the next Gunsmoke when we get back,” my father said. Again, she laughed.

I began to wonder if she were becoming lucid. What if she were to wake up the next day and say, “I am just fine! Let’s go home.” Or, “I am fine. Why am I here?” I wonder why she is in a sterile, newly opened home in the middle of Ohio. The day before, I was pushing her around the concrete courtyard with a high plastic beige fence. I don’t know why the fence was so high or why it couldn’t have windows.

Friday, we went to lunch again at Danbury. My mother hadn’t eaten breakfast today. She was a little more vacant than she appeared in the previous two days. My dad asked me to get some music, and everyone in the dining room voted on Frank Sinatra. My mom was a little miffed that I left the table. She didn't know where I went, and perhaps thought I had abandoned her. Her mood faded, and seemed a little vacant. She fidgeted with her fork and napkin. She lifted her empty spoon to her mouth.

When the music came on, my mother started sing My Funny Valentine when it came on. She didn’t have much conversation that day except for singing.

As my mom sang, my father started to cry. The man who smiles and tries to make her laugh started to shed tears. And I started to cry to.

The sad music made me think that maybe she should be some place more cheerful. Should she be in a small Italian village overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, wearing sunglasses and a broad rimmed hat, in the hot weather instead of in the middle of Ohio? I imagine she might have had a large family, larger than the one we have. Or perhaps the whole extended family—cousins and aunts and siblings--would all live in the same village.

If she were there, would she know the difference? Maybe she is already there or someplace similar in her mind.