She fades, I change: dealing with dementia

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My grandmother is fading. My mother posts daily on Facebook. Each day, a memory of her childhood. Of her mother. Some sweet moment to hold onto because my grandmother is fading memory first.

As her brain forgets to cling to reality and now, it also forgets how to walk, to speak with clarity, to heed the impulses of the body until she has to be diapered and cleaned and gentled when she kicks and screams. She is moving backward. My mother sees her future in her mother. I am also prone to forgetfulness.

I join a gym.

My memories of my grandmother are rolled in dough and sugar. She has always been obese. When my mother became her mother’s caretaker, she tried to limit desserts. My grandmother found ways to acquire and hide her treats. She lashed out when she didn’t have them. She lashed out when she ate them. From this I learned there is no happiness in food.

This food-body relationship is generational. My mother has always been obese. Perhaps there is more to it than a lack of exercise and an abundance of food. I can’t say. What I can is that I regularly watched my mother sit with her legs crossed and eat a family-sized bag of pretzels. Another time baby carrots. Another time gummy bears. I suspect this is what my grandmother did when she knew how to feed herself.

I was raised to be obese. To eat and indulge and then starve myself with a diet of guilt and regret and then eat and indulge again. Sugar, bread, regret. I want to break out of this pattern.

I quit eating grains.

My mother is forgetful. Mostly small things. But some years ago she forgot how to cook. Recipes she’d made us for years she can only mis-measure or burn. “I know I used to know this,” she says, and she is so young I can think of no other comforting answer than, “Maybe you just thought you did?” Is it the inevitable blood sugar crash? Is my mother fading? I can no longer tell. I watch her fumble with words, ideas and history.

I give up sugar. If it will worm holes into my memory, I’d rather live without it.

My husband says you can do everything right and still have dementia and Alzheimer’s. I know this is true. Perhaps my drastic, reactionary lifestyle and diet changes won’t stop my mind from breaking, but there are benefits now. I am stronger, healthier and have both better long and short-term memory. It turns out I have a gluten allergy. Without gluten, I rarely get sick. It turns out sugar and grains caused severe attention deficit, and without them, I have no need for medication and no longer experience blood sugar drops and dizziness.

My grandmother has stopped remembering that she doesn’t remember. Most days, she does not know what she has lost or that she has lost it. She continues fading. They say it won’t be long. They are trying to make her as comfortable as they can. That means not changing her diet.

My mother could still make different choices for her body and brain. She could learn what works for her. I have lost hope she will try. Like every daughter, she worries she will turn into her mother. The truth is, she has never been like her mother, but those words won’t stop the brain’s decay. She knows she is losing bigger pieces of the picture. She posts memories daily on Facebook. She, like me, is afraid.

I work on my comforting responses.