We’ve had a string of good days lately. I say that because Kate seems happy and has appeared to enjoy herself. It doesn’t mean there has been any lessening in the other symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Her memory only gets worse, and I observe new signs of confusion.
As we prepared to leave the restaurant after lunch the other day, she asked (using hand signals) if she should take her napkin with her. That is the first time I recall her ever asking that. She has frequently taken paper napkins. She has used them in the car to wipe the saliva from her mouth or to store in a basket in our garage (after she has torn them into smaller pieces). This time it was a cloth napkin. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. On several occasions, she has asked if she should take her glass with her. Two or three times she has actually taken her glass. In two instances I caught her and returned the glass. Another time, the owner of the restaurant saw her walk away with the glass and asked if we would like a “To Go” cup.
Later at dinner that night, she asked, “Are we in Fort Worth?” I told her we were in Knoxville. She said she thought she recognized the buildings across the street as buildings in Fort Worth.
When we got home, I turned on the TV to a recording of CBS Sunday Morning while she worked on her iPad. After a while, I told her I was going to take my shower. She had her robe in her hands, pointed to herself, and then pointed in the direction of the hallway to her room where she keeps her clothes. This is one of those situations in which I misinterpreted her hand signals. I thought she was going to her room to get a night gown. I said, “Yes,” and she left.
When I got out of the shower, I noticed that she wasn’t there. I just thought that she was taking a while to find something and would be back shortly. When she hadn’t come back in another ten minutes, I went to check on her. The first thing I noticed was that all the lights were out. That made me wonder if she had gone to bed in her room. That has happened before, but it had been a long time. I called her name, and she said, “I’m in here.” She was on the bed in the guest room next to our bedroom. It turned out that she thought I meant for her to go to bed in there. The only thing I could figure out was that when I thought she was asking if she should get a gown for bed, she was really asking if I wanted her to go to bed in the guest room.
I felt really bad about that. I know that she has become much more accepting of my suggestions about clothes that she wears. She also asks me what to do a lot more than in the past. In this case, I felt like the master who had sent her away to her room. I quickly explained that I never would suggest she sleep in another room without me. She said she would prefer to be with me, and I told her I always wanted her to be with me. This is just one more of those things I’ll never understand.
On a brighter note, last night she was lying in bed working on her iPad while I was reading in my chair. She became unusually talkative. She began by saying she was glad that we had married and that we had had a happy marriage. This is a conversation that we have a lot. We both reflect on the things for which we are grateful, especially for our marriage. She talked about our children and how proud she is of them. This led to her talking about her mother and how glad she was that we had kept her in our home for the last five and a half years of her life.
All of these are things we have talked about many times, but there were two things that stood out about this occasion. One is that she would stop and start to go back to her iPad. I took this as a signal that she was finished, but very shortly, she would continue the conversation. This must have happened three or four times before she really stopped. It made me feel that she was having a powerful sense of gratitude.
The second thing that stood out was her talking about her mother’s having stayed with us during the last years of her life. Although she was not detailed in her description of those days, she clearly had not lost her memory of our having kept her. I have discovered so many things about which she has absolutely no memory that I was thrilled to know she remembered this special time. Moments like these are precious.
