How this woman learned, to deal with the multiple situations brought on by her own mother’s dementia, translated…
“Thank you so very much, for allowing Yu-Hwa to come home to stay for a few days, I feel so bad for taking her from you,” my mother blinked her eyes at the webcam on her cell phone, and showed her gratitude. The person on the other end of the line was, her son-in-law, my husband.
“Why are you thanking him? It should be him, thanking you? You’d raised me into an adult, and, just gave me to him.” I’d felt bad, and, my husband had that goofy grin on his face on the screen!
After the conference call, my mother continued arguing with me, “oh, you don’t know! Last time, he’d, nagged me………….”, not again. Since my mother-in-law passed, my husband had often, nagged me about heading back home to Pingdong to visit my mother.
“The years go by so fast, you should take advantage of the time given, the only elder we have left is your mother in Pingdong, she’s already ninety, you must take more time, to stay with her.”
Stay with her? Easier said than done? Let’s first, set aside how headstrong my mother is, always too self-centered, and recently, she’d, become demented, and, she can, hold her grudges like nobody can, it’s, driving me crazy. And, in that old book of records, were what everybody owed her, both made up, and imaginary included, and, if you’d calculated in the interests, it’s, a huge thick book of records. And everybody whom she’d, noted, will have NO chance, of getting their names off the rosters, they’re going to, bear with the bad names until they all die.
“Tell you what, there’s something I’d kept to myself for many years, your mother-in-law………” oh my, my mother-in-law had been dead for SIX years already, and, before she was still alive, she’d kept getting noted, and, now she’s dead, my mother still, wouldn’t let her go, and it’s not like, I can ask for a leave of absence from the god of the underworld for my mother-in-law, so she can clear things up with my mother.
“Whenever I’d thought about your father, it gets to me, he’d gone to those god damn pointless wars, and, didn’t care for any of us at home………”, and, my poor old dad has been dead for over twenty years, and his ears, they must be itching every single day in heaven, because there’s someone down here on earth, who’d, said his name every now and then, don’t know if there’s an ENT specialist up in heaven to treat him for it?
“Your brother-in-law was awful, thinking back to when………”, thinking back to when, had my mother not seen in my brother-in-law that he was genuine, kind, and stable, why would she have, worked so hard, to make the match for my sister, too hurried, to become, his mother-in-law?
“Wu who’d sold the cold noodles, Lucky who’d sold the boxed up lunches, Wan who drove the cab, Hua who works at the salon…………………” everything that’s, already happened, one by one, repeatedly, mixed and matched, all over the places, it just, never ends.
“Remember the good qualities of others, stop remembering what they did you wrong”, that was my mother’s most widely used words. Since we were growing up, she’d always reminded us, to think on the sunny sides, and as her children, we can recite everything she’d told us forwards AND back, and now, the one who’d, broken ALL of her own rules, was her!
And all of those who got misconstrued by my mother through the years are, countless, and, no matter how hard the individuals fend for themselves, it’s, useless. And what’s worse was, my mother started, not hearing things anymore, and her dementia plus her deafness, it’d, made her, even MORE anxious by the day.
As she’d started ranting on those old debts, I’d, taken them to be real, and felt empathetic toward what she’d gone through, other than consoling with her at the moment, I’d gotten angered at those who’d, wronged her on my own. But later, I’d found, that something, wasn’t, quite right, most of the things she’d talked about never even, happened, there wasn’t any connection in her stories, even the leading characters, they were, never playing the same roles twice……………turns out, she’s the one, who’d, written these, scripts, she’d slowly, entered, into that labyrinth of time.
When it became, fruitless, arguing with her, right and wrong became, funny and weird. And so, silence became, my best policy. My mother before me, was this person whom, she can’t even remember, and so, I can only, take up whatever part in her script she’d, assigned to me, immersed myself, into her emotions, ranted on with her, laughed with her, and, played the game of make-belief and play-pretend with her
As my mother became what others called, “old and crazy”, we are more than glad, to be her “followers”.
And so, as this elderly person became taken by dementia, the daughter found that it was, much easier, to just, go along with her mother, because at a lot of time, telling these elderly that something they’re telling us isn’t correct, it’ll only, make them angry, because that, is a symptom of dementia, because they feel like we’re, challenging them on WHAT they remembered to be correct, so, it’s just, easier, to just go along, like this woman had, figured out…
Life, the Obstacle Course 