For a few months it looked like America might take a sharp turn for the better, electing Bernie Sanders as president, funding healthcare and education by reining in billionaires and corporations, and moving away from the nightmare of Trump as well as the nightmares that preceded and caused him. I’m bummed that didn’t happen.
Later it looked for a few months like Trump might steal the 2020 election, losing the vote but clinging to power, presumably leading to huge street protests and violent attempts to suppress them. I’m glad that didn’t happen. But the can wasn’t kicked very far down the road.
In October I moved back from Buenos Aires to brace for the worst that might be coming. And to join with the protesters I’d watched do such good work and suffer so much for it. And also to help out my mom. While I’d been in Buenos Aires she’d started having some memory issues, and in July of 2020 we got the diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
I didn’t immediately appreciate what that meant, but here’s what I’ve learned. Nobody gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s with certainty. You can only be sure after a person dies and you cut into their brain. So diagnosis is a process of doing tests and scans to rule out other possible causes of the memory symptoms and in the end concluding it’s probably Alzheimer’s. What that qualified conclusion means is this. For reasons that are partly or wholly genetic two proteins start abnormally building up in the brain. Over time this kills neurons and shrinks brain regions. It happens first in the parts of the brain that form new memories, so a loss of short-term memory is what shows up first. But that’s just one point in the steady march of the disease. It moves mercilessly on to long-term memory, cognition, personality, speech, movement. It progressively takes you apart as a person. Finally it reaches your brain stem and turns out the lights, if death doesn’t come sooner from pneumonia or bed sores.
My mom had to stop working. She had to stop driving. I helped her live in her house a few more months but then she had to give that up too. In March she moved to assisted living. Her first two weeks there I was able to visit all day and help her adjust. Then for a month or so she’d often think she was at a Holiday Inn and I needed to come take her home. But thankfully that passed. She’s built routines, made friends, and settled in.
She’s resigned herself to the parts of her situation she has to resign herself to. Other parts she’s being spared. She knows she’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but she keeps that at arm’s length because the diagnosis isn’t certain. And her conception of Alzheimer’s owes more to reading about foods or herbs that might help prevent it than reading or hearing about what Alzheimer’s does once it’s here. And most importantly she believes in a God who heals. And she believes in heaven.
Those sorts of beliefs are examined and rejected in my book. But I’m so glad that my mom holds them. While I bear the weight of my mom’s real situation I’m grateful for any part of that weight that she’s spared.