I wouldn't have believed it...

I really wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me a few years ago that I'd be changing diapers at my age (50-something). I have no children but my 80-something mother has Alzheimer's and her descent into the vagaries of that disease has been swift and unrelenting.

She's not the first in her family to succumb to Alzheimer's. Two of her aunts wandered into the fog and never returned to the world the rest of us share. But my mother was a strong woman who cared for an invalid husband and two elderly parents and was still going strong and working part time into her 80s. She enjoyed her family, her garden, homemaking and was always busy with something.

The frail woman lying in the next room is a shadow of her former self.

I don't know how deep her descent is because she has lost her language skills and is often unable to make herself understood. I became pretty good at guessing what she wanted for a while there but now, even that is slipping away. Much of the time, what I say doesn't penetrate either. Sometimes I forget that she isn't deaf, I raise my voice as if that will penetrate the darkness that surrounds her. For a while there, she would look at me sometimes -- a glimmer of her former self visible -- as she scolded me "you don't need to shout." I soon learned that when, in frustration, I did shout, my message was lost anyway, unheard over the internal dialog that was trying to formulate an appropriate rebuke for a daughter who dared to shout at her Mom.

But today has been a good day. She had difficulty waking up but that allowed me to change her diaper around noon without her being aware of the process. Her response to queries about breakfast were vague but finally she managed "later." I let her go back to sleep. When she was finally awake, I persuaded her to eat perhaps two small scoops or peach ice cream. It's the most she's eaten at one time in days.

A short time later, when she asked me about supper later I was encouraged. I offered all sorts of things in hopes that one would pique her interest. She finally agreed she could try to eat some mashed potoates. I got them ready right away and she ate three little tastes before saying she had enough. Maybe I should have made gravy. If, as she hinted, she will try again later to eat something, I will.