Why we walk: Because of Mom.

In order to gear up for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s Mom and I are posting videos about why we walk. I've talked with Mom and through our conversations mapped out four reasons that motivate us to walk. In addition to those videos I wanted to reflect more on our reasons for walking. So, each week I am going to include a blog post where I can let out a bit more of what's been muddying up my headspace and share a bit more of my heart for our "reasons." 

So, reason 1:

1. We walk because of Mom.

I think, when we start to care for big, overarching causes we often lose sight of the individual. But my Mom is a person -- a beautiful, intelligent, life-giving human, and Alzheimer’s is slowly robbing her of what makes us most human – the memory of our experiences.

When we recorded our video, Mom spoke specifically to the loss of her autonomy in her ability to drive. She feels confined because she can’t go places, and of course she does.  Can you imagine working all of your life to get to that sweet point of retirement, only to have your years of friendship with you adult children, travel, deepening friendships, and raising grandchildren diminished because you are constrained in when you can go places and how you can get there?  It sucks beyond measure or articulation.

Additionally, I talked about (and you likely observed in the video) how Mom is struggling now to articulate ideas and find words. A conversation that we used to be able to have in twenty seconds now takes two to three minutes, and in our fast paced culture we are so busy zipping off from one thing to the next that we forget to have patience to slow down so that Mom can find her words. I am most guilty of this – sometimes I am so rushed that I just skip a conversation altogether. For Mom this has to amplify the isolation already growing between the gaps. I try to be mindful and take time. But it is hard.

One of my all-time, favorite TV moments is when Stephen Colbert takes a few minutes on his show, The Colbert Report, to talk about his mother after she passed away. This is the segment I find myself revisiting, time and again: 

"I know that it may sound greedy to want more days with a person who lived so long," said Stephen, breaking character to eulogize his mother and fighting back tears. "But the fact that my mother was 92 does not diminish, it only magnifies the enormity of the room whose door has now quietly shut."

I believe one of the reasons why Alzheimer’s research goes unfunded and the disease goes unmentioned in discussions on the greatest medical challenges of our time is that we consider significant memory loss to be a normal side effect of old-age. Our sharpness will inevitably dull, our memories will blur, and so Alzheimer’s is just an end of the normal continuum in the aging process. However, Colbert's segment reminds us that no daughter or son is any less consoled to watch their parent suffer. No circumstances diminish the challenges as parents fight off any illness, or ultimately succumb and pass away. The fact that they were older or led a full life does not necessarily lessen the pain or narrow the gaps in our hearts as we watch as innocent bystanders in the face of suffering. 

The horrors of Alzheimer’s are brazen when we observe them in the cases of those with early-onset, like my mom. But one thing that caring for my Mom has taught me is that when illness and death strike those who are older, it is still incredibly painful and challenging for their community and loved ones, no matter their age.

And so -- the enormity of what Alzheimer’s takes from us spans the whole of humanity, but I also experience this in the specific and exact ways it is robbing my mother of her memories, experiences, and ability to cherish her "golden years." I see it when her eyes well up in panic because misplacing her purse isn't just a mundane annoyance, but a slap-in-the-face reminder of how hard it is to keep up with the demands of a routine day when amyloid plaques are gumming up neural connections. I feel the pang of the loss when my mom stutters over words as she tries to read to my infant son. It pervades our days in a very direct way, and I am not even the one who has to suffer directly from the illness.

And so, we walk because of how Alzheimer's has directly affected Mom. 
We walk because of Mom. More next week...