My mother had a particular way of folding towels. No matter what type of towel—bath towel, dish towel, wash cloth—she laid the item flat, folded in one long side, then the other, and then folded in the short sides, one then the other. When the folding was complete, the towel showed no raw edges, only folds on all sides.
This is the way I learned to fold towels. I don’t always stick to it. Sometimes I fold in the long sides and then roll the thing up in a ball, kind of like a Hostess Ho-Ho wraps chocolate cake around the creamy white filling. But most of the time, I follow the towel-folding ritual the way my mother taught me.
The day I visited my mother and found her towel cupboard held nothing but badly folded towels was the day I came to accept that she had dementia.
Dementia started slowly, picking at her brain, changing her behaviors, stealing her words, but the decline didn’t happen overnight, so it was easy to miss. Plus, who wants to contemplate the idea that the person you have known your entire life is morphing into a stranger? Acceptance for me was a rocky road of denial, anger, fear, and despair.
Even so, I came to accept my mother’s decline before the rest of my family did because I visited her so often. During the last few years of her life, I visited her daily. When she moved into the retirement home, she wasn’t driving anymore but she could still walk upright, play the piano, eat meals with other residents in the dining room, send emails, go out to the smoking area with her smoking buddy, and use her microwave without blowing up her blueberry muffins. Once her brain cells began to die, so did the woman I’d come to know, the one who was so much more fun after her kids were grown and gone.
A bout of pneumonia took away her favorite addiction. Even though smoking cigarettes made her cough, like a true addict, she couldn’t have stopped unless someone made her. The nurse at the retirement home made the decision for her. Dementia was a kind of blessing. Mom couldn’t remember she used to smoke. A couple months of nicotine patches, and she stopped coughing.
Over the course of three years, she graduated to a walker, quit being able to read music, couldn’t figure out how to use her computer, and gave up on the microwave.
Then COVID happened. I visited her from outside, through her window. My brother and I set up a baby monitor so she could hear my voice. I taped photographs to the outside of the window to remind her of who she used to be.
She begged me to get her out of there. The family didn’t have much choice. The retirement home didn’t accept Medicaid, so we would have had to move her anyway. I organized all her furniture into keep, give away, discard. I arranged for the movers to haul things to their various destinations: the new carehome, my brother’s garage, the dump.
My mother slept on her couch the entire time the movers, all masked, came and went. She slept while the new caregiver and I, both masked, sorted her clothes into keep and discard. We arranged her new room: couch, nightstand, armchair, tiny round table—all that was left from her previous life, all the previous lives. I rescued the photos from the outside of her windows and taped them to her new mirrored closet doors.
When she finally woke up, she sat in her armchair and looked at me through the window. She said, “Why did you do this to me?”
The human brain is a marvelous miracle when it’s working. When it begins to fail, the brain is just a spoiled piece of meat.
So, watch your mother. Pay attention. She might not be an OCD towel-folder like my mother was, but when your mom starts avoiding doing things she used to do because she can’t figure out how to do them anymore, that’s when you know.
If you loved her, treasure the time you have left with the mother you used to know. However, even if you didn’t love her, either way, prepare to meet a stranger.