I enjoy looking at the memories that
facebook reminds me for each day. The
thing I enjoy most is reading comments from friends who have since passed away
- like yesterday morning for instance, I was reading thoughts to wish my
husband and I "Happy Wedding Anniversary" for almost each year I'd
been on facebook. The last comment I
read was from my mom. I think that's
cool.
Mom was not an avid facebook
user. She seemed to allow herself to get
flustered with modern technology. The
year I started my facebook account was also the first year her children all
wondered if there was some instability happening with mom's mind. I don't know if that was the first year she'd
been tested for Alzheimer's. I do know
she was tested at least twice, but the results didn't show Alzheimer's - but
she was in the early stages of dementia.
Many people assume they are the same thing as Alzheimer's is a form of
dementia. I personally don't understand
the difference, but here's how it was explained to me: Dementia is like a wheel and Alzheimer's is
just one spoke on the wheel -
thus
everybody that has Alzheimer's has dementia, but not everyone with dementia
has Alzheimer's. I have never heard any other names to refer
to dementia except for Alzheimer's.
Corey is more well read on the
subject than any of the rest of us are - plus he has friends who had been
schooled in the subject. There are seven
stages one goes through when he or she has dementia. My mom passed away during stage five - which provided
us with fun memories. I have always been
grateful that none of us had to see her at stage seven.
My mom turned 70 the summer of
2009. Sunny had suggested doing a
tribute themed party for her. We would
invite everybody in the ward, everybody she had ever worked with, everybody
that we could remember she had known. I
made up some fliers - I don't even know how many. I had mailed about half, emailed a few and
hand delivered quite the rest.
A neighbor had called me to ask if watch
her girl who had been in pre-school with Jenna.
I told her that I had to run some errands, but if she was okay with it,
I could take Amber with me. That
actually turned out to be an awesome blessing for me, as I didn't even have to
stop the motor on the car. I would hand
the fliers to the girls, tell them which houses to leave them at, and made a
game of it. I think I must have picked a
day that my mom was not home as we were able to hit all the houses in her
neighborhood without having met her.
When I was down to my last six
invites, I asked one of the neighbors if the girls could play in her yard until
I came back. As it turned out, the
neighbor was doing some gardening and the girls volunteered to assist. The neighbor was disgusted by the amount of snails
that she'd come across while gardening. Jenna and Amber would eagerly pick them
up and play with them. They each had
three snails on the table when I returned.
They were watching them "race".
They wanted to keep the snails but I told
them that snails were not allowed to ride in the car. The neighbor put them in the garbage can
after we left.
We encouraged those who couldn't
attend mom's party to send a letter which might include any memories they had
of mom. Sunny provided paper and pens
for those who wished to write a letter during the party. We held it at Patrick and Sunny's house. Their children had made a giant banner and
hung it over their garage. The birthday party was great! Mom was certainly surprised.
Corey had a special tribute to share
and read a list of 70 things he loves about mom. He read the list of simple words or phrases, but
would pause to relate an experience of why a certain thing had made it to the
list. It was an awesome program. Wonderful memories. Enjoyable night.
All of her children took pictures,
and Bill asked us to send in what we had and he would put ALL of our pictures
on one disk. We started a scrapbook for my mom to put the cards and letters and I
added the pictures. I had created 15
pages on the computer, but had added handmade pages with photographs and incorporated
them with the letters - more than 65 pages total.
I don't know how often she looked at
it. We brought it to her after we had moved
her to assisted living. I pasted this to
the top of it:
I thought if she looked at it every
day, she wouldn't feel so alone (not that she was, but before she met Harold,
she often felt that she'd been forgotten) but she kept it in a drawer - which defeated
the purpose.
I'd forgotten that she had passed
away the day after my 12th wedding anniversary date to Roland - or that she was
buried the day before dad's birthday (which he didn't seem much for celebrating
on earth - probably not in heaven; though
I'm certain that their reunion was a great birthday gift)
