farmdoc's blog post number 240

I’m relieved I won’t be there. Not because I don’t want to be there. But because I couldn’t bear it. Today Lucy Same, my mother-in-law, turns 84 years old. And she doesn’t know it. She doesn’t know anymore what a birthday is. It’s a pity. A tragedy. It tears my heartstrings to see this formerly intelligent, articulate and interested woman reduced to this. By that horrid disease she has. I wouldn’t wish dementia on my worst enemy. I definitely wouldn’t. I used to have a fine mother-in-law. I know I’ve never been the type of husband she envisioned for her darling only daughter. But before she disappeared into her cognitive fog she always treated me decently and respectfully. Even lovingly. And she adored our darling children and grandchildren. I thank her for all that. I haven’t thanked her up to now. And today, when I want to, she can’t receive my thanks. When I visit her, I see her dozing, sitting, eating, drinking. Sometimes her face is expressive, sometimes blank. Sometime expressing appropriate emotion, mostly not. To wish her ‘Happy Birthday’ seems the ultimate banality. So what do I wish her today? I don’t know. Given her personal cataclysm, I suspect the most appropriate way of acknowledging her birthday is by remembering what she was like before. And quietly shedding a tear.