Happy Mother's Day, mom.

I'll always miss you, and I'll always carry you in my heart.

Enjoy this excerpt from my book, Mothering Mother:

When I Miss Her

I miss Mother when I go to the grocery store. Since I’m no longer eligible to park in the parking spaces for the handicapped, I must walk by the light blue and white lines as I head across the parking lot that no longer takes me ten minutes to cross. I see Mother grip the handle of the grocery cart and remember the freedom this rolling walker gave her.

I still see her curved spine dipping, her stockings slowly sagging from above her knees and eventually bunching around her ankles. I see her silhouette, complete with a bright blue nylon cap and its hundreds of petal-shaped pieces that made her head look like a massive flower. Some people loved her hat, others made fun of it, snickered about it behind our backs, but there were a few who found her and her blue hat endearing.

I miss her as I pass by the bananas. She said they gave her potassium and ate one a day. I had to buy seven a week—not six, not eight—though I often cheated, hoping to tide her over a day or two. Sometimes I get the urge to eat one in case I, too, am low on potassium. Any fruit she ate had to be peeled, cored and washed until it practically no longer resembled anything that ever lived. Apples were pale and tinged brown, grapes looked naked and embarrassed without their skins.

I miss her when I pass the Little Debbie display . Her face would light up at the sound of me opening the cellophane wrapper of an oatmeal pie.

I miss not picking up her half gallon of milk, her apple juice and her frozen dinners. I knew which ones she liked—the meatloaf, beef tips and flounder, nothing with pasta, very little chicken. Ice-cream bars remind me of her dying, not living. I can’t bring myself to eat one, or even buy them anymore.

I miss her small talk with the cashier, the slightly condescending way she treated the help, and the times she surprised me with genuine kindness and humor. As time went on, she took forever to get out her wallet, and two forevers to pull out her credit cards. She could no longer differentiate a Visa card from a debit card, from a license. She’d just let them pick, holding the plastic squares out innocently like a hand of playing cards. I always tried to catch her before she let strangers rifle through her entire wallet and checkbook. By then, some of her prejudices had diminished and she chitchatted with anyone who caught her eye, regardless of race, which was a pleasant change, though unreliable. She insisted the baggers carry our groceries to the car, no matter how few we had, and she saw no need to tip them. I’d slip them a dollar or two after buckling her in. Tipping never was her thing.

Now I just go to the store like anyone else. No one to slow me down, no one to check on, no bananas to count, no Little Debbies to hide so she won’t eat them all in two days.

It’s just ordinary, and what once seemed a bother, is now missed.

~ Carol D. O'Dell

Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter's Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir

available on Amazon

www .mothering-mother.com

Family Advisor at www .Caring.com

Syndicated blog at www . opentohope .com

www . kunati .com , Publishers

Mothering Mother: A Daughter's Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir has humor in the title. Readers know what's in store.

I wondered if the crazy antics I wrote about while caring for my mother who had Alzheimer's and Parkinson's would be received in the spirit in which I intended--to offer insights and laughter in a place that's nomally so sad and bleak that it's hard to trudge through it in real life, much less on the page. I wrote about wanting to put my mom in a play pen, about the day I imagined dropping her off at the local hospital like an abandoned baby and hitting the road; and I wrote about her incessant questions and how it pushed me to the bitter edge of sanity.

If you don't laugh, you'll explode.

Humor got me through caregiving. I make no apologies for that. I made fun of myself, of our circumstances, of the confusion and mayhem and fights and misunderstandings. I had to if I was going to tell the truth. That's how I coped. My mother didn't find this insulting because it's not how I meant it. We had many good laughs.

“The best doctors in the world are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet and Dr. Merryman.”
- Jonathan Swift

Julie Christie got busted for making a Alzheimer’s remark during her Golden Globe nomination speech for best actress in Away from Her.

I wouldn’t call it a joke because while being mildly amusing, it was simply a fact. She was attempting to thank everyone and afriad she’d left someone out said, (paraphrased) “If I’m forgetting anyone, it’s because I’m still in character.”

Was this a slur?

Do people with Alzheimer’s not forget things? Was it a disparaging remark to mention forgetfulness? 

I don’t think so. I don’t think she meant it in an ugly, pointing way.

I didn’t post about this comment when it happened because I didn’t want people to think I’m downright mean, but I’ve had time to think about it and I’m willing to risk it now.

Why? Because we’re (Boomers and everyone) going to face Alzheimer’s in staggering numbers. It will effect everything from Pharmaceuticals to housing, and we had better get used to it and one way people handle things that scare them is to “try it on” by kidding around. It like taking a ball in your hands and tossing it back and forth not realizing that your brain is analyzing weight, mass, mobility, your hands and muscles are exploring what all you can do with it, what you can’t do with it–does it bounce or go splat? You think you’re just playing with a ball.

Yes. Alzheimer’s is funny. Not all diseases are. I promise you, my family members are relentless kidders and anything is fair game. 

I’m grateful for this because I also know that we’re there for one another. No matter what life throws at us. We’re fighters, scrappy, wiry and not about to give up.

I have to give Mary Emma over at Alzheimer’s Notes credit here. She asked the question: Should We Laugh/Joke about Alzheimer’s? Check it out.

I feel like I have a right to say this because I lived with someone who had Alzheimer’s. My mother suffered with this disease the last three years of her life–and probably before that. She also had Parkinson’s, (another funny disease, as Michael J. Fox says in his book, Lucky Man, “Parkinson’s is a disease that keeps on giving.” and I was her full-time caregiver–day and night. Great book, by the way.

I put my time in the trenches caregiving and if it weren’t for my biting sarcastic wit, I think I would have just keeled over. Perhaps the humor needs to start within–by those who have earned the right to speak up and speak out.

Am I disrespecting my mom? Or the millions who have Alzheimer’s?

Absolutely not. I can’t take away my mother’s dignity. It’s not possible. No disease could diminish her.

She was a phenomenal woman who happened to have Alzheimer’s. She wasn’t Alzheimer’s, she had  Alzheimer’s.

Humor  takes risks. Humor pushes the envelope, but humor also heals.

I only wish to God that Robin Williams would do a good take on Alzheimer’s. Make me laugh until I cry! Make me feel the hurt, frustration, impatience, confusion–and then let me release with a big belly laugh. Nothing could be better for the close to six million people who suffer with the disease–and all of the millions of family members and caregivers of these folks than to snort, spit, heave and jostle their belly muscles in a rip-roaring guffaw.

Will someone cross the line? Say something tasteless? Sure. It happens. All we can do is speak up and articulate why something crossed the line–use it to educate and enlighten. It’s worth the risk.

Research proves that humor:

The saddest day is when your loved one crosses into that void and no longer gets the humor, the banter, the playfulness you’ve so long enjoyed. Until then, laugh as much as you can. Laugh at yourself. At this disease, at this screwy life.

Why laugh? ? The more Alzheimer’s is talked about, handled, explored…the less stigma there is. The easier it will be to say, “I have Alzheimer’s.” How many people keep it a secret? Afraid of isolation? Afraid their friends or co-workers will not know what to say around them so they don’t say anything at all, and they stop coming around. This is why it’s important to open up a dialogue–all dialogue.

~Carol D. O’Dell

Author of Mothering Mother: A Daugter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir

available on Amazon

www.mothering-mother.com

With all the doom and gloom of how many of us boomers will get Alzheimer’s, it’s nice to hear that  coffee, something I naturally love is a useful part of my arsenal and already in my daily routine.

A few years ago, we were without power after a hurricane, and I didn’t have a car, and it was almost noon. I was pacing. No coffee, no happy mama. It dawned on me that I could pound my coffee beans with a hammer, cook them on a pan with bottled water outside on the grill. I was one happy girl. If I have coffee, I’m pretty sure I can survive anything.

I know coffee/caffeine got me through my caregiving years. I finally bought an extra coffee pot and put it back in my bathroom so I wouldn’t have to go to the kitchen early in the morning. We had built my mother’s apartment onto our house and it was right off the kitchen. If she heard me in there, it was all over.

“Car—ol?” She’d yell and my heart would sink. Just one cuppa coffee, God, and then, I promise, I’ll be a nice little daughter–I pleaded.

That bathroom coffee pot saved my life. It saved maybe more than one life.

It’s not the big things in life that make us happy.

It’s the small things we celebrate in big style, like the smell of bacon, earthy, nutty woo of coffee, a bowl full of glossy dark cherries, a big fat bodacious sunflower or the way light dazzles the surface of water. My heart overflows. These are the best parts of my day–along with hugs, sloppy dog kisses, writing and getting into that zen zone when time ceases to exist–and a conversation with a good friend–life at its best.

I have to believe a grateful heart will extend our lives and make them more precious while we&rsqu