About four months total from the time I moved in … Do you know how you see something, the same thing, every single day, and it changes so gradually that you never notice it at first, and then it’s like BAM!! and you see the change? That’s how it was with Mom. One morning over breakfast I couldn’t help but notice that she looked like she had lost about ten pounds and gained fifteen years. I didn’t say anything, of course. I never would, unless she brought it up, and then I would be as tactful about it as I possibly could.
Although she did not say anything immediately, she must have discerned that I was aware of the change. Her ribs were showing, but sex had begun to take a different turn. No longer was she asking me to fuck her. It was all sweet and loving, which was fine with me, and more and more of it involved Mom on her back and me mounting her or performing oral sex with her lying down. She still hungrily craved sex, it’s just that she was having to make accommodations for her declining health.
It wasn’t until the fifth month that I finally said something, and Mom had no recourse but to address things. I told her of my commitment to her and to this, her dying wish, yet I cautioned her and reminded her that I would never ask anything of her that she was not willing to freely give. She appreciated that, and we lay together the entirety of the afternoon making slow, sweet love. That evening, I brought her dinner in bed, and as we ate I reminded her, “The kids will be here in a few days.”
“Oh, really? What for? Weren’t they here just a few weeks ago?”
And there it was, the first sign of memory loss. The first sign of Alzheimer’s, maybe? I didn’t know, but I knew I needed to tell Benny and Kaitlyn what to expect before they arrived. After Mom went to sleep I stepped onto the back porch and did a conference call. “Yeah, it’s getting pretty bad,” I told them. This would be the perfect time to cover my tracks, so I took advantage of it. “She sometimes calls me by my dad’s name and wonders why we don’t sleep in the same bed anymore.”
“Oh, Daddy. I’m so sorry to hear that,” Kaitlyn said.
“Just last week she came up behind me and kissed me on the neck and told me that sex was wonderful,” I added.
“Whoa, Dad. I can’t even imagine what must be going through your mind right now.”
“What’s going through my mind is that about ninety-seven percent of the time she is herself, lucid, aware of what’s going on around her, so I don’t treat her differently,” I said in way of a response. “I am expecting the same from the two of you. Do not patronize her. Just treat her as you always would.” They assured me they would, and then we moved onto other things.
The kids spent a solid week with us. At one point, Mom asked Kaitlyn three days in a row when she got to the house, thinking that Kaitlyn had just arrived. At another, she referred to me as my children’s’ Grandpa, and at another still she called Benny by my name. The kids were great, though. They never acknowledged her wrongness, but they did not make her feel like a fool, either. Very respectful.
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