Tag: dignity

Journal entry from June 7, 2016

Quite often these days, Momma will ask me to buy her a notebook the next time I go to the store, declaring that she can never find any paper on which to write her lists. I know for a fact that she has umpteen notebooks and pads of paper squirreled away all over her apartment home.

Mom is at what her doctor calls the “moderate stage” of dementia where she is keenly aware that she is losing her ability to recall information and is trying her hardest to keep random pieces of information that won’t stay filed away in her brain in a place where she can easily retrieve them. Her lists are her safety net helping her capture not only her to-do list, but the stray thoughts, ideas, and necessities of life.

Once in awhile, mom asks me to take her shopping. Shopping excursions to Walmart or Walgreens invariably result in Mom tossing a new package of legal pads or a brightly colored spiral bound notebook into her shopping cart. She insists she is all out of them and there is no convincing her otherwise. Rather than bringing a sense of order to her world, the multiplicity of lists bring chaos to her sense of order as she tries in vain to gather her thoughts into one place.

I have since gathered most of those notepads/books into one cabinet in her apartment. One thing is certain–she has no need for more notepads. Rather, under her watchful eye, I acquiesce to mom’s request and jot down a note for myself on a shopping list, assuring her I will purchase a notebook for her on my next trip to the store.

 You may be wondering, why not tell her the truth? Why the charade? Why not just tell her that she has plenty of notebooks? Right or wrong, I believe I am honoring my mom when I later “find” one of her notebooks and we can cross the “notebook for Mom” off my list. It gives mom the fleeting pleasure of having one of her requests granted, and I receive the gratification of pleasing my mother and guarding her fragile dignity.