This I Believe

This year, Mom sent us three Valentines. One for me and my husband, one for my daughter, and one for my son. On the envelope of the first card, Mom spelled my name wrong. On my daughter’s envelope, she transposed our street number. And on my son’s, she wrote her own return address with an incomplete ZIP code. Mom is just 60, and Mom has Alzheimer’s.

I had the dubious honor of being the first in our family to notice something was off. Five years ago, she flew cross-country to attend to me and my newborn daughter. But this woman, easily the most capable and organized person I knew, was a wreck, bewildered by the simplest instructions for a diaper change or a grocery run.

Three years later, after the birth of my son, she was worse. I stopped chalking it up to new-grandma nerves and started wondering whether something was seriously wrong. Later, Mom mentioned to her general practitioner that she had been forgetful. After a visit to the Mayo Clinic, Mom broke the news to our family: She had been handed a death sentence punctuated by a question mark.

Because of Alzheimer’s, Mom’s future is at best uncertain and at worst terrifying. Her past is slipping away with alarming speed. What she’s left with is the present–a gift if we choose to see it as such.

With a kindergartner who sasses me and a preschooler in the midst of potty training, it’s tempting for me to look beyond this day and yearn for those to come. But when I’m with Mom, I savor each minute of now. Now is what counts–this I have come to believe.

When Mom visits, I can’t focus on the fact that she used to set off on morning walks alone, but that my subdivision’s winding roads and cookie-cutter houses now make a solo journey too perilous. I focus instead on the opportunity to walk with her. During this bonus time together, we don’t talk about yesterday or plan for tomorrow. We watch for daffodils poking their heads up. We breathe in the crisp, green spring air. We laugh together as my kids tumble down the path in front of us. We have each other, for now.