Last night was the first time I had the sense that Mom was looking at her magazine and not reading it. It was also the second time this week that she took off down the hallway with only half her clothing on.
This is the woman who still makes witty remarks and engages in verbal punning. She can operate her golf cart. She works on acrostic puzzles every day. She still sits down at the parlor organ to play her slow versions of her favorite classical music. But in the past week or two, she has started to lose another significant chunk of cognition.
It’s more than the absence of short term memory and the confusion in long term memory. It’s a little different than forgetting processes like how to heat her coffee in the microwave or how to turn on the bathroom heater. And the “it” is more than one thing, I think.
Her ability to reason is disintegrating fast. She’s missing obvious connections.
And it seems she is more aware than ever that she cannot remember. Of course, that awareness does not help her remember. At Costco with John yesterday, she chose a small area rug to put at the side of her bed. She carried it in the house, set it down, and almost immediately lamented that they had not been able to find a rug. We showed her the rug, she went and placed it on her bedroom floor, came back, and talked again about how they could not find a rug.
Last week, to my surprise, she energetically packed up all the clutter on her dressing table, file cabinet, desk, and dresser to prepare her room for having the furniture moved and new flooring put in. Anytime she went into her room, she asked why all her furniture was bare. Last night, she seemed mystified when I told her we would unpack the boxes and put things back today.
It’s 8:30 a.m. I better put my laptop away and get ready for the day. If I am lucky, Mom will be able to rearrange her stuff in her room. I honestly don’t know if she can do it. But I guess that is what I am here for.
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