My Mother’s Dementia

I owe my mother; obviously I do, for carrying me in her womb for nine months, for birthing and raising me, but — I’ll put it this way — I never got the impression that she liked me. Sure, she had it in for my siblings, too, but I had two additional strikes: I looked like my father, her eventual ex, and I was the second daughter — she’d desperately wanted a boy.

Her tongue was legendary for its sharpness. When she came home from work at the end of the day, I’d race up to my bedroom as soon as I heard her footsteps at the door.

When I was 18, she divorced my father and married another kind, mild-mannered man, and briefly, she seemed nicer and less critical. This expansive state lasted a few years and then she turned sour on her new husband and on the rest of us, too.

I don’t want to talk trash about my mother — that’s not the point of this tale, so I’ll just add one little thing that drives the point home how much I rubbed my mother the wrong way. She tried to disinherit me, too. Luckily, my youngest sister was able to distract her from doing so.

I would be jealous of anyone who mourned and deeply grieved the loss of her mother. It meant she’d had a real relationship with her parent, one that warranted grief.

I have a confession to make. When I reached the age when my friends’ parents began to die, I would be jealous of anyone who mourned and deeply grieved the loss of her mother. It meant she’d had a real relationship with her parent, one that warranted grief. I didn’t want my mother to die, God forbid, but if it happened, I couldn’t imagine feeling broken with sorrow and loss.

Then my mother’s mind started to go. It took us children a while to realize it because we had always considered her irrational and volatile to begin with.

But one day when I was visiting her in her apartment in Israel, I noticed when she walked down the street or popped into any store, she spoke to the shopkeeper first in Hebrew, ten seconds later switching to English, then finished off in Yiddish with smatterings of French. Only to start again in Hebrew. Everyone faked her out that they understood, but no one did. By then, her second husband had died.

My sister who lives in Israel, hired a fantastic young woman from the Philippines to live with my mother. My sister spent time and oversaw my mother’s care, too. She also had a bad history with my mother. We all did.

But God sometimes has the last laugh, or maybe it was a last kiss flung down from above. My mother’s inability to communicate verbally turned out to be the best thing to ever hit our relationship. It was a windfall. In a few months I was able to shed years of embittered daughter-mother relations. You see, no one could understand her.

Instead of barbed exchanges that made me go numb inside, we sat next to each other on her couch, skin-to-skin close. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt her skin.

When I flew in from the States and visited her, I wasn’t sure if she recognized me, but when I brought out photo albums, she’d nod and smile. Instead of barbed exchanges that made me go numb inside, we sat next to each other on her couch, skin-to-skin close. She squeezed my arm, and I rubbed her soft hand. I never knew she could be that soft. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt her skin.

She continued to speak in her multi-culti babble, and I continued to not understand but smiled and nodded just the same, plucking out a word here and there I could identify. She would smile at me and say, Shein, Shein, and I felt gratified because she’d never considered me her prettiest child. We sang to each other. We played hand games and I would massage her shoulders and neck. She loved more than anything to dance. The hora, zoomba, you name it. My daughters would accompany me, and we’d all dance together.

Bit by bit, visit by visit, some of the tough residue that had thickened inside me began to unloosen. It was crazy! She’d been horrible to me, especially to me. I thought I’d written her off. No mother of mine. I didn’t need one anyway; I’d done just find without a biological one. I had established my own family.

But as I sat, my shoulder pressed tightly against hers, I felt so content to be with her, beside her. She continued to talk in a mixture of four languages, and we continued to not understand her except in fragments. She might’ve been cutting me to the quick, for all I knew. It didn’t matter. Only touch and presence mattered – only movement and timbre of voice.

Sometimes, I’d fall into a reverie, try to imagine my mother’s own childhood. She had been less loved by her own sharp-tongued mother just because she was a girl. I imagined my mother’s familiar barbed words coming at me, but instead of letting them hit a target and pierce me, as they had when I was a child, what if I had….ducked and let them fly over my head? Because how personal were they to me? I looked like my father, and I was the second girl in a row, the disappointment, which had everything and really nothing to do with me. And so much to do with the hatred she felt toward herself.

One day, my sister called and told me to catch a plane to Israel. Ma didn’t have much longer to live. When I boarded the plane, Ma was alive, and when I got off the plane, just as I was going through security, I received a text that she had died. I’ll never forget the kindness of the dark-haired security guard, who when I said, ‘Ima sheli meta,’ — my mother just died, she clucked and comforted me, and said “Mamaleh” — a Yiddish term of affection often said to a child, meaning “little mother.”

Her inability to remember and communicate created a space, a way for me to make something in those last months, something to hold onto, something to even mourn.

I’m sure most people’s experiences of their parent’s dementia weren’t as “healing” as mine, and far more likely devastating, especially if they had to be the parent’s caretaker, especially if they had to deal with financial paperwork, especially if they had beautiful memories stored in their childhood bank from which to draw, and so every diminution of their parent’s abilities, memories felt like a diminution of themselves.

I don’t mean to make a Hallmark card of anyone’s experience of dementia, but I’ll always be grateful for those last six months when her mind worked on a different plane. Her inability to remember and communicate created a space, a way for me to make something in those last months, something to hold onto, something to even mourn.

She allowed me to not quite forget but blur the years of mistreatment. There on her couch, we could just be with each other, like any mother and daughter, the way it was when I lived in her womb, moment to moment, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat, the two of us, two beings.