My Mother Doesn’t Call Me Anymore

Did a lifetime of constant moving cause my mother’s early dementia?

“Young children exposed to frequent family upheaval may experience considerable stress, while not having the language skills to fully understand what is happening or to have a sense of threat alleviated.” -Cummings EM, Kouros CD

t’s been twelve years since my mother was first diagnosed with early dementia, probably seven years since I last spoke to her on the phone.

She was young. In her early seventies.

My mother and I talked every week. Usually, in the early years, when I didn’t call her first, she called me on Sundays.

“Hi darlin’,” she’d say in her southern drawl that hid under a New York shadow, “how are you?”

The excessive moving began early in her life.

Army Brat

My mother was born in Abbeville, South Carolina, so we always considered her a Southern gal. She was an army brat, moving to different states nearly every year or less.

One of her longest stints was probably in the Northeast, and my mom and dad raised us in upstate New York until we were in grade school. Hence that hidden Yankee drawl.

Plenty of studies demonstrate the internal stress involved with children of military families — especially with the aspect of constant uprooting.

Military brats have a higher average of avoidant personality and separation anxiety disorder. While my mother did not exhibit any avoidant traits, in many ways I believe she experienced her constant transient life as a form of separation anxiety. She loathed moving.

“Frequent geographic relocation during adolescence and youth was an indicator of psychosocial stress and vital exhaustion in the transition to middle adulthood.” — Lin KC, Twisk JW, Huang HC

If you met my mother, you never forgot her. She was eternally ebullient, engaging, and intelligent. In conversation, she spent all her time getting to know you. At a social event, she worked the room (this explains me).

I cannot recall a day my mother was down or a day that she yelled at anyone or anything. She was perpetually up.

Everything excited her. Movies. Books that she devoured, ballet. She adored ballet and theatre.

To see that mind, that spark, decimated is perhaps the most difficult thing about cognitive illness. It’s a slow fading of sunrises and sunsets.

Where Did You Go?

I began to notice changes in my mother in our phone conversations. She would repeat herself, stop talking for a beat, or ask me something more than once.

Mostly, the long, drawn-out changes were something we ruminated on after she was well into her illness. It’s common to notice more things later.

After the diagnosis, I began to travel to Atlanta every month. I would drive to her house and take her out to lunch or a movie.

When I rented a car to visit her, I’d help her into the passenger side. As I slid in behind the wheel Mom looked at me, that contagious smile across her face. “I love this car! You’ve had it for so long! So nice.”

“Mom it’s not my car. It’s a rental. My car’s in Florida.”

“Really? Is that where you live?”

“Yes, mom. You visited me there.”

“I did? Heavens.” She stroked the dashboard. “What do you do again?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Oh, yes. You are so smart!”

This is something my mother said all the time, even before her illness. When I visit her now and think she does not recognize me, she’ll stare at me and say that. It somehow reassures me. Neurons sparking a semblance of remembering.

One day after lunch we decided to peruse a Barnes and Noble. Mom wandered about the shelves, leafing books, pulling some from shelves, and sometimes sitting at a table to look through them.

Yet often sitting and just staring into space.

When she found a book she wanted, she stood in front of me clutching the book like a stuffed animal. “What should we do now?” she asked.

I told her we needed to pay for the book.

“Okay. What’s the procedure?”

Later, she told me she was going to the lady’s room. I waited. And waited. Finally, I went to look for her.

I found her roaming around outside the store. “Oh. There you are. Where did you go?” she said.

“Findings suggest that cognitively impaired older adults are just as vulnerable to the negative effects of relocation stress than cognitively unimpaired older adults. Relocating within the past year, moving to a less desirable residence, and relocation stress affected depression and anxiety complexly across samples.” — Costlow K, Parmelee PA

Earlier, when they still lived in Alabama, and before the diagnosis, Mom would drive downtown and later call her husband, George. “Honey? I don’t recall the way home. Did they change the streets? Nothing looks the same.”

Memory Care Does Not Remember the Pandemic

When Mom finally went into memory care it was during the beginning of the pandemic.

Again, the moving.

We moved my mother more than a dozen times in three years, all over North Georgia, because the memory care units could not find enough help.

I’d often find her wandering the unit alone, embracing her latest “baby,” a stuffed cat or dog.

And everyone had COVID.

Before she got sick, my mother moved many times in her adult life. Moving is stressful. It sucks at any age.

Yet, they moved. Just like in her childhood.

Again and again.

George was discontent no matter where they were. The enormous house in Alabama Shores became too large. The farm in Georgia is too much to handle (the damn chickens).

Mom was not a complainer. But during those moves, she vented like a kind, southern teenager. She never understood why George could not be happy in one place.

For once.

So they moved, again and again, just like in her childhood.

Looking back, I realize my mother never was in one place long enough to have normalcy. Family was the only normal she had.

Did all of the constant moving since childhood — and into her senior years — make her sick?

Christmas Cookies and Lasagna

My mother doesn’t call me anymore and I miss her.

I visit her less now because she is so far away. And I visit her less now because she does not recognize me. If I’m there she does not remember I was there.

Just years ago when I visited her her eyes burst into joy. “Timmy!” she’d say, embracing me. “My Timmy.”

She was up and around then, always in the social room chatting it up with residents. “Fancy Nancy,” they called her.

Later in her room, we’d sit talking about yesterdays, the things she’d recall, the Christmas cookies she baked, the lasagna. Snippets that fired neurons. Her eyes would light up and she’d lock her soft smile on me.

“You were the easiest,” she’d say. “You slept all night.” (I was certain she said the same thing to my brothers.)

Before her official diagnosis, Mom would mail those Christmas cookies to me in a box with no internal wrapper. They’d arrive in crumbs.

She sent blank birthday cards and boxes of beads from Mardi Gras or strange trinkets she found somewhere.

She mailed a blank check to my son for his birthday.

More So

My mother’s illness has taught me things.

I always had her calm, happy demeanor, but I am more so now. I notice things, things I’ve always noticed but now more so, that most find trivial.

Rain. The forest. Experiencing a red-tailed hawk or a deer or the fine tendrils of a spider web across my face on a hike. Profound love.

Kindness. Seva.

And as a tribute to my mother, I’m reading more, trying to break her record of books in a week (I’m behind).

Now when I visit she is usually sleeping. Confined to her bed or chair, she is swollen with stagnant lymph.

George is always with her, holding her hand. They are like high school kids.

And I am so grateful to George, who has taken care of her from day one.

When she is awake, she is chatty happy, and always engaging. What she says often makes no sense, then something does. She is like a child.

“I remember you. You are so smart,” she says.

And I remember you.