{"id":1771,"date":"2013-04-07T20:14:17","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T01:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/?p=1771"},"modified":"2013-04-07T20:14:17","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T01:14:17","slug":"that-one-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/that-one-word\/","title":{"rendered":"That One Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was easy enough to dismiss the first signs.\u00a0 After all, who hasn\u2019t lost their car in a parking lot, particularly a nondescript white compact car that looks like so many others?\u00a0 Others I ascribed to the occasional senior moment, in fact I met my mother in the lobby of the church on a Tuesday night, and it turned out that we both had the wrong day for choir practice.\u00a0\u00a0 And getting lost on the way to my brother\u2019s house \u2013 understandable since this was a car trip she only took twice a year.\u00a0 Easy to be in denial at this point.\u00a0 Then \u00a0one day, out of the blue, a tennis playing friend of my mother\u2019s asked me, \u201cDo you think that your mother has Alzheimer\u2019s disease?\u201d\u00a0 I guess my mother had gotten the score wrong one too many times.\u00a0 From that point on, I started watching her like a hawk, unrealistically trying to disprove the obvious.\u00a0 Not only would she lose her car, but she get in a similar car and desperately try to use her key.\u00a0 Lost purses, lost names, lost words.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then it happened.\u00a0 One day she came up to me and said, \u201cDo you think that Alzheimer\u2019s disease is creeping in?\u201d<\/p>\n

My memory is so distinct on this moment.\u00a0 My mother had organized a trip for the whole family to celebrate their 50th<\/sup> wedding anniversary.\u00a0 She arranged for a week long celebration at a Club Med in the Dominican Republic for all her children, spouses, grandchildren, 23 of us in all.\u00a0 I remember arriving in the open air lobby, and noticing an elderly couple shuffling along, wondered if the vast menu of activities included a senior center.\u00a0 The couple turned and I was astonished to see my parents, who a couple of years ago would have played tennis or beach volleyball.\u00a0 It was an odd vacation for many of us, since our pattern had always been to go somewhere colder than where we were \u2013 skiing over spring break, and to the Upper Peninsula Michigan in the summer. \u00a0I had never been on a beach vacation. I didn\u2019t know how to comfortably sit in the sand or deal with salt water.\u00a0 My father was similarly at loose ends.\u00a0 He certainly wasn\u2019t going to swim; I don\u2019t think he\u2019d taken his shirt off in public for at least 25 years.\u00a0 I brought a backgammon board down to the beach to play with him, but we neither of us could understand how to balance the board in the lumpy sand.\u00a0 My father wandered off and then I heard my mother\u2019s voice behind me.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think that Alzheimer\u2019s disease is creeping in?\u201d<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t imagine her courage to say those terrible words out loud, to admit something she\u2019d probably been trying to dismiss privately for months or years.\u00a0 Perhaps it was the organization of this trip that made it obvious to her.\u00a0 All in all, it was a tour de force, making plane reservations for all 23 of us, flying in from different directions to different airports.\u00a0 We all got there, but when we found ourselves unexpectedly flying first class I knew that something was up.\u00a0 In the coming months, my mother would struggle to find any word, but at this most poignant moment she nailed the description perfectly, \u201ccreeping in\u201d – capturing the advancing paste that was gumming up the intricate networks of her brain.<\/p>\n

She was still standing behind me, and I squinted tightly into the glinting sun and shuddered beneath my itchy saltiness.\u00a0 How should I respond to her supreme act of bravery?\u00a0 Ours was a loving family who enjoyed rollicking good times dominated by sports, music and laughter, but a family that steadfastly avoided emotional issues.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I ever saw my mother cry; she would describe my brother Charlie as so handsome, funny and smart with a good singing voice, but never get misty eyed over his penetrating autism.\u00a0 Her stiff upper lip was one of her prized possessions.\u00a0\u00a0 My grandparents both died within 6 weeks of each other, but my mother busily pressed ahead planning funerals.\u00a0 The phrase \u201cI love you,\u201d was never bandied about in our household.\u00a0 There was the one time I saw my father awkwardly crawling on the floor tussling with the dog, and in what he thought was a private moment said, \u201cI love you Duffer.\u201d\u00a0 But that was it, I don\u2019t think my parents ever said \u201cI love you,\u201d to me.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter because it was obvious anyway.<\/p>\n

What was she really asking me?\u00a0 Simple acknowledgement that she knew what I knew?\u00a0 Perhaps she wanted to see what it was like to say the word out loud for the first time?\u00a0 I think back to when my mother began to realize that Charlie was not learning to talk.\u00a0 At first she probably told friends that he was just undergoing some tests, that he had a developmental delay but that he was going to be all right.\u00a0 But inevitably she had to say the word out loud for the first time.\u00a0 Except she never used the word \u201cautism.\u201d Perhaps it was just too dreadful and she needed to soften the blow.\u00a0 The story line was that Charlie\u2019s problems were left over from a suspected bout with polio.\u00a0 Now here she was using an equally dire word \u2013 Alzheimer\u2019s \u2013 out loud for the first time.<\/p>\n

Should I stand up turn around and give her a hug and let her know that we would always be there for her?\u00a0 But she had to know that already, she just had to.\u00a0 And like I said we weren\u2019t a hugging family.\u00a0 I struggled up from the loose sand to face her but I still didn\u2019t know what I was going to say.\u00a0 When I turned around, with gratitude mixed with shame and cowardice, I saw that she had wandered off.\u00a0 Perhaps she had accomplished what she had intended.\u00a0 With that one word, she acknowledged that she needed help, and had passed me the baton, transitioning our relationship from mother-daughter to daughter-mother.<\/p>\n

Once we got home, I discovered evidence of her heroic efforts to stay on track.\u00a0 There were notepads where she had practiced writing all of her children and grandchildren\u2019s names with their ages.\u00a0 There were reminders sprinkled around the house, many taped discretely inside kitchen cabinets, particularly the contact information for someone named Jordan Luhr. \u00a0I never did find out who he was, but I could see the slow transition of her handwriting, from her familiar confident loops to an emerging trembly scrawl.<\/p>\n

I finally accompanied my mother to her doctor to hear the results of her CT scan.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t really matter what the scan showed, because it was going to be bad news and silently we both knew it.\u00a0 There was no avoiding the fact that she had progressive dementia and a CT scan was not going to make that go away.\u00a0 We sat in the brightly lit waiting room and I saw my mother patting her thighs in time with her jumpy legs. \u00a0She had not mentioned Alzheimer\u2019s since that moment on the far flung beach.\u00a0 Now she was waiting for someone else to say it out loud, and it was going to be a doctor no less, wearing a white coat with a stethoscope slung around his neck, who would absolute eliminate any possibility for \u00a0denial.\u00a0 From my own selfish point of view, I was pleased that Dr. Osher would be the bearer of bad news, after all, as a gerontologist, presumably this was what he was good at.\u00a0 He must know how to break the news gently, somehow couple the word Alzheimer\u2019s with hope, handle emotional outbursts, and give us some guidance.<\/p>\n

The door opened and Dr. Osher walked in carrying a slim file.\u00a0 \u201cWell Fan, your CT scan looks normal, there is a little brain atrophy, but nothing more that we would expect in someone your age.\u201d\u00a0 My mother\u2019s tapping foot relaxed and she smiled.\u00a0 \u201cBut since you say that you\u2019re having some problems with memory I would like to give you a little test.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to give you three words, and then we are going to chat for a little while, and then I will ask you what the words are.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother never shied away from a competition, and this was going to be the test of all tests.\u00a0 She sat up straight in her chair, put her hands firmly on her knees to stop their jittering and said \u201cI am ready.\u201d\u00a0 Dr. Osher gave her the words and attempted to have a conversation with her, but she was focused elsewhere. \u00a0Her eyes were half closed and I could see her lips moving as she practiced the words over and over again. \u00a0I was silently cheering her on, thinking \u201cCome on Mom, just one more minute, stay focused, you can nail it, I know that you can.\u201d\u00a0 I would have done anything to help her cheat. \u00a0If I had a pencil and paper I would have distracted Dr. Osher as I slipped her the words.<\/p>\n

And then the big reveal.\u00a0 Dr. Osher said, \u201cAll right Fan, do you remember the words?\u201d<\/p>\n

She looked him directly in the eyes and with perfect diction said \u201cYes, no problem, they are Vermont, basketball and yellow.\u201d<\/p>\n

These words are seared on my brain even to this day, and yes, she had nailed them.\u00a0 I was so proud of her.\u00a0 I felt like jumping up, high fiving her and doing a victory dance.\u00a0 But Dr. Osher had moved on to the next little test.<\/p>\n

\u201cFan, here is a pencil and paper.\u00a0 Could you please draw me a clock face with the hands at quarter to ten?\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother stared at the paper blankly and then turned to look at me and gently shook her head. \u00a0I feebly rose to her defense. \u00a0\u201cDr. Osher, I don\u2019t think that is a fair question for my mother, because she only has digital clocks in her house.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry Doctor, I just can\u2019t do that,\u201d said my mother.\u00a0 It was the first time I had ever seen her just totally give up in the face of a challenge.\u00a0 And with that the other shoe quietly but unequivocally dropped. \u00a0I now waited for Osher to say that awful word.<\/p>\n

\u201cFan, you are obviously having some memory problems, but let\u2019s not give it a name just now.\u00a0 I am going to give you some medication that may help a little bit, and you can come back and see me in a couple of months.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are you kidding me?\u00a0 Is this guy as big a coward as I am?\u00a0 But maybe he was right.\u00a0 Why label something as Alzheimer\u2019s, a word whose synonyms might as well be humiliation and sorrow?\u00a0 With cancer, you can at least start off with hope. \u00a0\u00a0Patients are praised for their heroic battles, and physicians brim with options, armed with silver bullets and technologies with bells, whistles and blinking lights.\u00a0 With Alzheimer\u2019s you\u2019ve got nothing and the best you can hope for is calm acceptance.\u00a0 Not so different from when Charlie was first diagnosed with autism.\u00a0 I remember my mother telling me the pediatrician\u2019s advice.\u00a0 \u201cJust take Charlie home and love him, that\u2019s the best you can do.\u201d\u00a0 And that is what I tried to do for my mother for the next 7 years.<\/p>\n

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, post, stop) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters.\u00a0 Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.\u00a0 Scroll down for answers.<\/em><\/h6>\n

It might start as ** **** thought when you can\u2019t find your car,<\/p>\n

But grows to a creeping fear when you don\u2019t know where you are.<\/p>\n

And when these slips and mistakes start to accumulate and compile,<\/p>\n

Saying they\u2019re senior moments is just delusional ******.<\/p>\n

And so what if you ****** the question on the memory quiz,<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to say the word out loud, because it is what it is.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Answers: An idle, denial, nailed<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was easy enough to dismiss the first signs.\u00a0 After all, who hasn\u2019t lost their car in a parking lot, particularly a nondescript white compact car that looks like so many others?\u00a0 Others I ascribed to the occasional senior moment, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-such-is-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-sz","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1772,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}