Wrapping it Up

'Some images just can't be erased...or can they?'  

That's  what I wrote on the gift tag attached to my husband's Christmas present.  Inside the box was a pair of sunglasses with holiday-themed pencil erasers glued to them.  Skip knew immediately what it meant.
"Oh how perfect," he exclaimed with a chuckle. Then he put them on and we all had a good laugh; all of us except Mom of course.  She remained oblivious to her surroundings and the conversation.  Mom sat off to the side working to unwrap a Christmas mug.  The tissue paper was nearly off when she began re-wrapping and placing the mug back in the gift bag.
"What did you get?" I asked her.
"I don't know," she answered placing the bag back on the floor beside her.
"Well aren't you planning to unwrap it?" I questioned encouragingly.
"Yes," she answered looking at the wrapped gift like she had not seen it before.  Then she lifted the bag, read the name tag and began the process all over again.  Halfway through (before she removed the protective tissue to uncover the mug) she began stuffing it back in the gift bag, once again placing it on the floor.  It took three attempts before I stepped in to assist her.  Together we unwrapped the mug.  She looked at it, took it in her hands, and without comment placed it back in the bag.
My jaw dropped open in disbelief.  I fought back the growing frustration and impatience.  "Do you like it?" I asked.
"What?"
"Your gift.  Do you like it?" I repeated.
"Yes," she answered without enthusiasm.
I could tell she didn't know what 'IT' was.  I asked her and she seemed confused.  She had forgotten what she had opened.  I lifted the mug from the bag to show her.
"Oh!  It's a mug," she told me.  It was as if she were seeing it for the first time.
I shook my head and went back to the gift opening.  It was futile to get my mother to pay attention, to react, and to understand what was happening around her.  There was simply no way to engage her.
Skip was still amused about the sunglasses remembering the event that triggered the creation of this gift.  The reader might recall my earlier account of how I had protected Skip from seeing...um... 'certain things'  until a few weeks earlier when he had to step in and help Mom get dressed while I was lying flat on my back with a painful pinched sacral nerve.  At the time I felt horrible about Skip  seeing my mother undressed, and while, in retrospect,  I thought it was funny, I wasn't sure that Skip found  it  humorous.  I was glad to see that he could now laugh as we sat opening our Christmas presents.

When we finished and cleaned away the assortment of ribbons and torn bits of paper, I looked over at my mother.  She was tying a ribbon to her walker.  She knotted and twisted it, twirled it around the handle and untied it.  Over and over, she fiddled with the ribbon that was soon to provide her with hours of fun.  At last!  This was a present she enjoyed.  The soaps, candles, mug, the assorted small gifts she might use meant nothing to her.  In fact, she didn't know it was Christmas.

I went to work making our holiday dinner.  I set the table in a festive display with special Christmas colors and my beautiful holiday china.  We sat down at the table and tried to engage Mom in conversation but her aphasia limited her words.  Her palate limited her enjoyment of the meal.  Her diminished understanding of words limited her enjoyment of the table talk. After several attempts to draw her in, I gave up.  Gone was the woman who relished the specialty foods that used to elicit her exclamations of approval; gone was the woman who laughed and joked; gone was the woman who was more excited about Christmas than the children.

That night when the dishes were put away, and the remnants of Christmas celebration were removed, I thought about how this Christmas was probably Mom's last one.  (Of course, I thought that same thing last year too and was happily surprised that she was still with us.)  This year though, I evaluated the situation and decided that in fact, Mom was not with us.  In essence, she had celebrated her last Christmas about four years ago.  Looking back I realized that since then she has not really appreciated the holiday, didn't remember any of the things that happened, could not report where we went, who we saw, what was said, what gifts were received.  It was heartbreaking!  How could we have known then, on that visit to our daughter and son-in-law's home that she would forget everything from that point on; that she would never again be the person she was that day; that she would continue going downhill...sinking slowly into oblivion?  My thoughts made me so sad that the magic of the day was soon replaced with an overwhelming gloom.  I began to think about all of the negative things that we experienced as we cared for Mom.  I remembered her outbursts, her frowns, her compulsive behavior, her lack of manners.  It was easy to become depressed and bitter.

I walked into the hallway to turn off the Christmas lights when a thought occurred to me.  Christmas, to me was about love.  I turned to look at the tree thinking about how each special ornament symbolized the love of friends and family.  I sought out those ornaments that had been given to us by my parents.  I smiled as I remembered the many years when Mom and Dad joined us to share in the joy and togetherness that we experienced as a family opening gifts, laughing, and loving. So many years of memories...such wonderful recollections!  There...right in the middle of the tree was the ornament of the cute little white-haired couple snuggled together in a green and red felt bed.  It represented  Mom and Dad.  Oh...and there was the fisherman ornament. (Dad loved to fish).  There was the ornament of a boy and girl that they bought for us when our children were small.  It was engraved with our children's names.  Suddenly I was awash in sentimentality.  I was remembering so much about the family times, the good times, the years and years that I thought I had forgotten.  I especially thought about my father who was forever clowning around much to our enjoyment. My wonderful parents were always with us, always smiling their sweet smiles, joking, playful, filled with mirth, merriment, and most of all, radiating love.  I missed Dad and yet I knew that the memory of him would never fade away, so in a sense he was there with me just at that moment. I heard his voice, felt his warmth, smelled his cologne.

As I reminisced, I found myself growing happier.  I thought about how we live our lives with all of the good times and some bad times too.  But ultimately our memories seem to reflect more of the good times than the bad -- at least they did for me. I took one last look at the tree filled with those reminders and then turned off the lights.  The magic of Christmases past hung in the air as I tiptoed off to bed.  As I closed my eyes I thought once again about Mom and her gradual detachment from the family festivities.  Then I thought about the fact that even though she was not all here, she would always be with us in our hearts.  Now was not the time to bemoan her fading away but to celebrate the years she was fully present. My last thought before I drifted off to sleep was of my mother painstakingly sewing felt animal ornaments for our tree when our son and daughter were young.  Now they hung on our daughter's tree in their children's playroom; and so, the memories were alive...her presence continuing on into a new generation.