I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

June 3, 2025 by 12 Comments

Have you ever fallen?

I don’t mean a stumble, you know, one of those quirky missteps where you quickly managed to compose yourself, hoping no one was looking?  Hell no, I am talking about a full-blown, body-twisting, head-banging header here.  You haven’t?   

Well I have, and it was a doozy!

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Allow me to take you back to around almost two weeks before Christmas in 2003.  As with most people during the holiday season, the typical seasonal madness had taken over my sensibilities which were already challenged from taking care of my mother who had Alzheimer’s and was residing with us at that time. For almost one year, her presence had greatly impacted life around us, she was in rare form those first months of living with us.  Constant escapes from the house and endless bouts of “sundowning”, night after night, allowed me little sleep. On top of it all, my work schedule had been drastically modified to allow for mom’s attendance at a local day care facility.

Six days each week involved a 100 mile round-trip rushing to and from the office.  My return trip home would often send me into a state of frenzy if I encountered heavy traffic; the facility my mother was in mandated a prompt 4:30 pick-up and had a strict rule, successive caregiver-tardiness would result in the dismissal of a given senior citizen from its program.  So, drive like the wind did I, not taking any chances of losing the little respite that I had been fortunate to find.  That was the exact scene on that fateful afternoon.

I share with you my diary entry from that fateful day.

Friday, December 12th, 2003

Secured mother from day care.  Stopped at supermarket, mother refused to get out of car.

Had to purchase just a few items so I left said parent sitting in back seat.

Ran, like hell, into market, grabbing items from shelf like a lunatic. Fast checkout, then out the door towards my car where I see mother high-tailing it across the parking lot at a fairly respectable rate of speed.

Run after parent, yelling at her to stop.  Parent gives me “the thumb”.  Either she couldn’t get her middle finger up or, for some reason, she thought waving her thumb would be much more insulting.

Catch up with mother, grab her by the arm.  Get cursed at. Person driving out of parking lot stops and gives me a dirty look.

I return dirty look and curse back at passer-by, under my breath. Get mother back into car, hook her into the seat belt.

Mother un-hooks seat-belt and tries opening door. I secure seat-belt, again, and hit the child-lock (which I had earlier neglected to do) to prevent her further escape.

Ride home proceeds without incident except for a good deal of parental cursing from the back seat.  Did I share that mumsy could cuss like a truck driver?  

Pull up the driveway, mother asks “where are we?” I tell her that we’re home, she insists “that’s a filthy lie, no we’re not!” Ignore, ignore, ignore.

Park and remove mother from the car.  Help her into the house. As we go in, she comments on the Christmas decorations.  The same comments she made on the way out the door earlier that day.

Sit her down in the kitchen with coffee and cookies.  Head back outside to gather packages but as I hit the top inside step, I become airborne.

Darkness.  For a few minutes.

Through my foggy head, I hear muffled yelling, dog growling.   Head and ankle hurting and sense a horrible heavy feeling on my chest.  Awake to Tonka, our 150+ lb. Rottie-Lab, lying across my chest as my daughter yells at him to move.

He won’t allow her anywhere near me, keeps growling.  Daughter keeps yelling.  My head is almost implanted in our front door (leaving a sizeable dent) and my left leg is, well, somewhere.  Just cannot feel it at that moment. Ankle is throbbing like a champ so I know leg is still connected to my body.

There, in the midst of all the commotion, a voice can be heard at the top of the stairs, causing even the dog to look up. A shrill voice not expressing concern or even offering help.  Not at all. Oblivious to her daughter lying in a puddle of chaos at the bottom of the stairs, my mother stood on the upper landing, yelling, in her typical, demanding form, constantly repeating “will someone get me another cookie, please?”

Fortunately, for her, I lacked the ability to climb up those steps and address her demands, face-to-face; a mild concussion and sprained ankle prevented me from carrying out any action of revenge.  When I managed to get back upstairs, I bit my lip and gave mother another cookie.  

That incident ended up becoming the inspiration for my book, and this website, Another cookie, please!

 From the Writer’s Workshop…Tell us about the worst accident you ever had.

One more older post from several years ago.  There was no need to go back into my memory banks for any other falling incidents as this one took the proverbial cake!  Dealing with someone suffering with Alzheimer’s/Dementia has mixed moments of sadness and humor.  Aside from any personal discomfort involved, this one was indeed laughable but the sad part was my late mothers inability to focus on anything but her wish for more cookies. 

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Filed Under: Dealing with Dementia, Writing Prompts Tagged With: , , , ,

“The Bad Day”

September 10, 2024 by 14 Comments

For many years now, early in September, I think back to a small scrap of paper with childlike handwriting, tucked away in a drawer at my late mother’s home.  It read, September 11, The Bad Day, a memory that my mother did not want to forget and was neatly rubber banded together with a few torn photographs and greeting cards.  The various special occasion cards had a ? scribbled next to the sender’s name which initially left me puzzled.  I later realized that my mother kept the cards only because they were pretty but had no idea who sent them to her. 

This took place in January of 2003.  Two weeks earlier, my mother was found wandering, early on a frigid and snowy morning by the local police, dressed in just a nightgown and slippers, holding a New York Times under her arm.  Outside temperatures, at 2:30 a.m., hovered at 16 degrees which did not factor into her stopping the incessant banging on the door of a house located not far from her apartment.  The homeowners, obviously terrified at the sight of this tiny, elderly, woman armed with a newspaper, called the authorities and cowered behind their door as my mother kept knocking.

Let’s face it, the phone ringing in the middle of anyone’s night is never a sign of good news waiting to be shared at the other end.  As my husband answered the call, I heard silence and watched him shake his head as he looked in my direction; “yes, that’s my mother-in-law, uh-huh, I see; thank you for calling, we’re leaving now to come pick her up”.

Frantically, we both dressed for the fifty mile trip, rushed out the door and my husband attempted to fill me in on the details as we pulled out of our driveway.  He was talking but it was impossible to focus on anything he was saying until he mentioned the address of the home my mother had been found at which was 131 Church Street.  That address had been my mother’s childhood home and suddenly I realized that it could only be Alzheimer’s; nothing else could be responsible for her midnight stroll, attempted home invasion and so many other incidents that I had too easily passed off to the woman’s advancing years.  What I couldn’t figure out is where she got the New York Times from as my mother never read anything outside of the local paper and that was just to check the obituaries each day.  I cringed in my seat thinking that she must have lifted it from someone’s doorstep as she roamed the streets early that morning.  Whatever the situation, one thing could not be denied, my mother continuing to live alone was now out of the question. There was nowhere else for her to go other than to come and live in my home; all I kept thinking about was how much my life, and that of my family, would be impacted.

A few days later, that concern changed as I stood in the midst of boxes, packing up her belongings. I kept glancing down at that scrap of paper which recorded my mother’s one brief written touch with reality more than two years prior. I thought back to that horrific day when so many innocent lives disappeared into huge, wailing clouds of smoke and dust. Life as each of us had come to know it, up to that fateful day, would never be the same.  What I was facing, as I became the caregiver to my mother, was totally insignificant compared to the events of September 11th, 2001.

It was a bad day.

 

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Filed Under: Dealing with Dementia Tagged With: , ,

Create, connect and share…

February 25, 2022 by 6 Comments

OIP

Why does anyone start something new like a job, recipe, or project? Obviously, there is always some guiding influence which directs an individual to make changes, or choices, in life. Sometimes, we all have the need for a little adventure, both to move away from the boredom of a situation or…some need to leave more of a significant imprint in our lives. 

I feel that when a person spends a good deal of time reading the literary works of others, down deep inside is the urge to express themselves through writing. This applies to many other artful means of self-expression. Hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained, correct? One never knows how well their efforts will be acknowledged, even appreciated, unless they try. 

And so, I did just that several years ago. The trials and tribulations of dealing with a mother suffering with Alzheimer’s paved the way to document so much of what was slipping away, day after day. During her many sleepless nights, I sat up, ready to thwart her wandering and started drafting a book and building a website, something to leave behind for my children and grandchildren. A collection of all my mother forgot and even more that I was determined to remember. 

In many ways, I credit my late mother’s dementia for encouraging one of the very things she sought to destroy when I was a teenager…writing in a daily journal and documenting much of the pain that children endure as they struggle through their growing years. 

Ironic, and I often wonder how many others venture into new and positive challenges based on how they have lived, and the people involved. Is it a mission, of sorts, to redefine ourselves, or…rewrite the history of what has made us who we are?

In some ways, I’ve tried to do both.  

 

workshop-button-1From Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop…Tell us about why you started blogging to begin with. 

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