The orange and maple-glazed Virginia ham, spiced apples, fresh green beans with caramelized onions, sweet potatoes loaded with brown sugar, and the hot buttered rolls were all big hits. Everyone around the Christmas dinner table dove in eagerly, and happy chatter flew around the room - that is, almost everyone dove in and almost everyone entered into the conversation. Mom was unusually sullen and silent. Sitting across the table from her, I asked her leading questions to bring her into the conversation, only to have her frown and simply shake her head one way or the other.
My husband, Tom, passed the marshmallow crowned sweet potatoes to her and she quickly withdrew her hands, refusing to take the dish. He offered to hold the hot dish for her while she served herself, but she continued to turn down her favorite holiday dish. Confused, Tom and I looked at each other. After a few moments of awkwardness, he finally passed the dish over to my niece, who gladly accepted it. Tom offered Mom several more dishes as they were passed from hand to hand around the table, and we couldn't help but notice that Mom’s plate remained empty until the French Onion dip came around. She emptied the bowl onto her plate and, not waiting for the relish tray filed with chips, crackers and crudité to come around, she grabbed a spoon and nibbled at the dip for the remainder of the holiday feast.
Later that evening, when I asked Mom if she was feeling alright and why she had not even tasted her favorite Christmas dishes, she gave me some vague answer about the food being too rich for her and that she didn’t want to keep others from having enough. The former may have been true, but Christmas is not a time to keep to one’s diet, and the piles of leftovers gave evidence to the fact that there had been plenty of food to go around. I offered to make up a plate for her, but she turned away from the food.
The rest of our holiday time together was much the same – Mom refused to eat anything that I prepared, in spite of the fact that Tom had gone to great lengths to purchase all her favorite foods. Crackers in buttermilk even failed to arouse interest. By the second day of her self-imposed fast, Mom complained of being too weak to get out of bed and remained in the bedroom we had made up especially for her, not venturing out to join us in the traditional family board games and trip to the movies.
“What’s up with Mom?” I asked my sister after she went down to check on her. Louisa didn’t know, but did get Mom to eat a big ham sandwich and a bowl of sweet potatoes that she warmed up for her.
“So yesterday the ham was too rich and she wouldn’t even touch the sweet potatoes. I don’t get it,” I said. My sister shrugged her shoulders before turning away to wash Mom’s dishes.
A few months passed before I finally learned the reason for Mom’s refusal to eat while at my house. Louisa confessed that Mom was afraid I was trying to poison her and that Mom ate only the French Onion dip because she knew the dip was "safe" having made it herself. Suddenly, all kinds of strange behaviors that I had seen in my mother in the past few months began to make sense. Mom was suspicious of my intentions and pushed me as far away from her as possible, beginning with a refusal to eat anything I prepared for her.
I was dumbfounded and hurt beyond belief. However, the fact that she had checked herself into the emergency room on the morning of one of my visits to her home, had hidden all her important papers in the trunk of her car, and asked the guard gate to put out a restraining order on my husband and me… well, it all fit the pattern of someone who was terribly afraid of being betrayed or hurt. It was me who was hurt, though. The latter stages of Alzheimer’s had moved me in my mother's mind from beloved daughter status to a feared assailant.
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Alzheimer’s often takes away feelings of security and wellbeing and replaces them with suspicion and fear. It is not unusual for the individual to turn away from a member of the family and take what seems like strange and drastic steps to protect themselves from the imagined threats. This is, perhaps, one of the more difficult behaviors with which a family caregiver must cope, particularly if they are the target of the suspicion.
(For more information on dealing with suspicious and threatening behaviors, CLICK HERE or read the sidebar to the right.)
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“A Bandaid for the Caregiver” is dedicated to all those families who journey with memory loss in their lives and the sharing of hope and joy and new possibilities. In each difficult moment there lies an opportunity for love.
Journey with courage,
Elaine
Journey with courage,
Elaine
Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, "Conversations with Nora: a Family’s Journey with Alzheimer’s" follows the journey of two sisters, Allison and Louisa, as they each struggle to understand the grip of Alzheimer's on their family. The novel, inspired by a true story, takes the reader from the sisters' first realization that something is wrong with Mother; through her agonizing denial and efforts to thwart the daughters' attempts to care for her; and then plunges the reader along with the entire family into the dark and confusing maze of dementia. The path to finding a place where Mother will be secure and can feel at home is filled with many obstacles, not the least of which are her own fight for independence and a medical system that seems unwilling to help them. Told through the conversations between the eldest daughter Allison and her friend Nora, the healing power of love and caring takes on a fresh meaning. Nora's supportive, patient, and nonjudgmental presence provides a safe place for Allison to move through a raw and painful reality toward healing.
Available in Paperback and Kindle
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