Alzheimer’s Memories
Personal reflections on my mom's passing and Christmas.
I generally don’t care for seasonal pieces. So many are produced, so why add to the glut? Yet, an email from my dad inspired me.
On December 7, 2023, he forwarded me a link to a five-minute video from his friend: “A Holiday to Remember: Chevrolet.” The following day, the Daily Citizen ran an article about it. I recommend viewing it—with Kleenex if you’re sentimental.
The video vignette carries significance for my family because my mom passed away from Alzheimer’s on September 29 this year.
On this Substack, I primarily examine cultural issues from a biblical worldview. But this month, I’ve decided to be more personal. A few bloggers I follow occasionally share about their personal lives. So, I decided to give it a try. I’ll follow the example of one. If you don’t care for this kind of writing, move on.
Dude’s Last Years
Unlike the Chevrolet video, which opens by showing the grandma staring blankly with no recognition of her family, my mom, Karen Funk, aka Dude (long story), she always greeted us with a smile. I don’t know if she knew exactly who we were during her last months, but she always knew that somehow we belonged in her life.
The last time I saw her in the memory floor recreation room, where she lived her last 14 months, she introduced me to the other people as a “friend.” I told them I was her daughter, to which she responded, “That’s right. You’re daughter number one, and I have a daughter number two” referring to my younger sister.
My mom earned a degree in interior design from The Cornish School (now Cornish College of the Arts) in 1964, married in 1965, and had me in 1966. In 1977, she returned to work as an interior designer, first for Cooper’s Fine Furniture, and then, in 1984, she moved to Greenbaum Home Furnishings.
Rejecting retirement, she had planned to drop dead on the sales floor, and she wanted her tombstone to say she was “discontinued.” However, she was let go in March 2018, probably because early dementia interfered with her ability to do her job.
My dad, aka Popsey, didn’t tell me until she was let go that she had stopped going on house calls alone for about ten years and, over time, had reduced her driving until all she did was her short commute. Then she had Popsey drop her off at work. Her car sat idle for two years.
In August 2020, we bought her 2002 Acura for our daughter. Dude claimed that we took it without involving her in the decision. But she was included and didn’t remember. About a year later, when she saw the car, she asked if it was new.
Dude denied that she was losing her memory at this time, and she would recount stories of her childhood and teen years over and over again. When I visited on her birthday in August 2021, I made a video of her retelling a story about how she and the other neighborhood children crossed Highway 99 to get to elementary school. Once she finished, she’d pick up the story again like a broken record.
In early June 2022, my parents attended my daughter’s high school graduation ceremony. After the program, Dude went to the bathroom. Later, I found her wandering through the crowded lobby, calling out in a panic, “I can’t find my family. I can’t find my family.” When I saw her, I don’t think she initially recognized me. She was freaked out that she couldn’t find Popsey. Seeing her lost like that hit me hard emotionally. The reality that my mom was losing her cognitive functions sent me into a period of shock and grief.
For a while, my sister and I had been asking our dad to hire a caretaker. We worried about her being alone four days a week while he worked a 30-minute drive away. Because Dude was stubborn, Popsey feared she’d reject anyone he would bring in.
Dude developed many annoying habits and drove Popsey crazy. Though in his early 80s, he continued to work to have a break from her. When he was home, she would cling to him and ask every five minutes, “How was your day?”
Finally, one of my dad’s coworkers convinced him to search for a senior living home with memory service.
So, in July 2022, Popsey sold their house of 42 years and moved into a senior home in Mukilteo, near the ferry that connects to Whidbey Island, where I live. With them that close, I visited them at least once a month. Dude lived in a studio on the memory floor, and Popsey has his own apartment upstairs.
Although she was always thrilled to see me, visiting her wasn’t that exciting because she couldn’t engage in much conversation. So, I’d monologue about what my family was up to and show her pictures on my phone. She loved flowers, so I’d bring her bouquets as well.
Unlike many inflicted with Alzheimer’s, she never got mean, delusional, or sundowned. In fact, my sister and I decided she became nicer because she could no longer remember anything to complain about. The staff loved her because she was always smiling and, early on, tried to help others. As expected, her mental and physical state steadily declined.
But part of her personality remained intact to the end.
The End
On her 80th birthday, August 11, 2023, several family members came to visit. My niece bought a giant Mylar balloon, and Dude joked that it would make her fly away. She still had her sense of humor.
That was the last time I saw her walk or stand.
On August 31, Dude fell, somehow got into her recliner, and lacked the strength to get out again. The staff called to say they had to put her in a wheelchair, and Popsey took her to urgent care because she had a big bruise on her forehead. That Labor Day weekend, she got moved to the hospital for hydration and tests and returned Sunday bedridden. She had been eating less and less over the past months and was malnourished. Food had lost its appeal.
I grieved more over that weekend.
I visited her on September 14, and she looked better than she had at the hospital. She surprised me by asking follow-up questions (which she hadn’t been able to do for a long time) when I told her how I had taken my daughter to the post office to renew her passport and gave an update on our son’s job search. She struggled to find words and kept saying she’d think of it later. I figured the hydration had improved her health, and she’d be doing better for a while.
My dad sent word to friends and family about my mom’s declining health, and some came to visit. My cousin brought her dad on September 23, and I also came. My mom smiled at everyone but said little as she lay in the hospital bed in her room.
That was the last time I saw her alive. When The Call came on the afternoon of Friday, September 29, my initial response was, That happened too fast. But I also felt relief. She was no longer in pain or trapped in a dementia brain. I knew she was with Jesus.
Christmas Memories
Dude loved Christmas and threw big Jesus birthday parties on Christmas Eve from the early 1980s, when I was a teen, until 2012 when my dad had eye surgery. At that time, they handed over the celebration to close friends.
As an interior designer, Dude decked the halls, streamed Christmas music on the radio, and simmered spiced cider on the stove. Christmas dishes and linens graced the dining table. The family cheese ball and other goodies beckoned on the kitchen table. Everything was merry and bright.
My parents served a buffet dinner and had a sheet carrot cake made with “Happy Birthday, Jesus” written on it. When it was time to light the candles on the cake, my mom passed around old candlelight service candles. Everyone in attendance would encircle the dining room table, and someone would light the birthday candles. Then, one person would light his candle from the cake and then light the candle of the person next to him. When the flame had been passed around the circle, we’d sing “Happy Birthday, Jesus,” and blow out the candles.
As a creative person, my mom loved finding just the right gift for each person on her list. She spoiled her kids and grandkids with many packages under the tree. This creativity faded as the grandchildren grew older. As teens, they preferred money or one large gift over several toys anyway. But perhaps this reduction of creative gift-giving was an early sign of Dude’s dementia—or my parents were simply tired of shopping. I don’t know.
Last Christmas, I knew it would be the last time my mom could converse. I knew a day would come when she wouldn’t know us. I knew a day would come when she’d be wheelchair-bound and then bedridden.
Surprisingly, she never really forgot us. However, I didn’t know she’d be gone by now.
Her quick decline, though, was an answer to prayer. When her body began to fail, I prayed her suffering would be short. And it was. Now, she has been made whole in glory because she trusted Jesus as her Lord and Savior.
This is why we celebrate Christmas: To rejoice that God sent his Son into the world to live a perfect life, to die in our place for the penalty of our sins, and to rise again to conquer sin and death and provide everyone with the free gift of eternal life. One must simply surrender one’s life to the Lord.