Maybe David Bowie will write a song about it

Here’s a little history lesson to give y’all a bit of context. When mother got lost inside her mind it was a gradual process at the beginning but by the end game it was a short trip to lights on/nobody home.

She experienced what is clinically termed a psychotic break. That is the point where those every day little neurosis we all carry with us, some more than others, take wing like Major Tom leaving Ground Control, family and reality far, far behind. It is supposed to be a temporary situation but, in mom’s case, it was followed by rapid slide into dementia.

Backing up the bus a bit, mom had put off seeing an eye doctor for, well, let’s see, 20 years or so because she didn’t want to get bifocals. I did mention every day little neurosis, didn’t I?

It seems she was afraid of finding out she had glaucoma and losing an eye like her mother. Yes, there is a gap in logic there you could drive a bus of pre-schoolers through but that was how mom put things together.

Finally, after her brother and then Dad had cataract surgery and ended up not needing glasses at all, mom decided maybe she could do an end run on the bifocal situation. So she finally went to see an opthamologist. No glaucoma. Big relief. Yup, cataract surgery was definitely called for. Even better.

Once the surgery was done the doctor realized her eyes were not adjusting quite as quickly as they should; he took a second look. With the cataracts no longer blocking the view he found the early signs of macular degeneration. The ‘wet’ kind which starts in one eye and progresses quite rapidly.

She lost her eyesight and with it reading, playing cards with friends, bowling, golf, watching tv or going anywhere (not even for a walk around the block) on her own.

Dad did what he could but mom was definitely not into tagging along to a fringe rehearsal, slouched in the dark remembering how much she loved being on stage.

So she stayed home not reading, not watching tv, alone, in the dark.

And it got darker.

When I’d make my weekly Sunday night phone call home I’d get pulled into her vortex. The house is worthless with just a carport–why won’t your father build a garage? Why did she let those people talk her into glass doors on the new cupboards. Your father is going to throw all our money away on a condominium, we’ll be penniless, we should stay here.  You and your sister need to take all of your junk out of the basement so there’s more room. The basement should have been finished years ago, it would look so much nicer. The house is falling apart, we need to move. No-one will buy a house that doesn’t have a garage….

Then her conversations began to swirl around not being able to sleep because of terrible thoughts or dad was cooking food that was  unsafe to eat or by the time her dad was her age he’d been dead for years and maybe that was how it was supposed to be. That was when I asked my sister if, maybe, she could take mom to the doctor because I was pretty sure, even for mom, this was not right.

The doctor said, well of course she’s a little down, she just lost her eyesight.

A few weeks after that diagnosis, my sister came home to a “please call me” message from mom’s hairdresser. She thought we might like to know about that day’s hair appointment when mom said, you don’t need to book me for next week, dear.

Oh, are you and John going to Calgary or out to the coast?

No, dear. We’ll be dead.

Oh….really? Ah…why….?

We’ve been poisoned.  John cooked some chicken last night that had been thawed for a day. I told him not to but he went ahead. So both of us will be dead by next week.

And that’s when the doctor finally realized maybe mom wasn’t just a little down.

It was a long and winding road after that starting with hospitalization to determine which of the many meds she’d convinced doctors over the years she needed were helping her and which were just making the mess worse.

The next hospitalization was for her first round of E.C.T. She came home almost her old self and it was wonderful to have her back for a few months. Then she starved herself down to 76 lbs, convinced she had diabetes. Food poisoning was not an issue because Dad couldn’t get her to eat more than a spoonful of yogurt or piece of toast in a day.

What is all this about? Well, other than a protracted denouement to my parents fifty years of life together, it is why I’m taking a memory test in a few weeks.

Yes, I am getting old and this forgetfulness is part of the collateral damage in the war against gravity. As my long suffering husband points out, I’ve always tended to forget things…and people…and places…and whatever it was I said I’d do yesterday…

If nothing else, it will establish a baseline should anything develop.

I’m bringing this up now because, by the time someone notices I haven’t touched the chicken on my plate or spots me wearing pyjamas wandering along Esquimalt road, it’ll be too late to notify Ground Control there’s a space suit missing.