What Not to Do When Your Mom Becomes Incontinent
Dementia Notes
Spring 2015
Mom and Kevin have a standing date every Saturday morning to watch whatever British Premier League teams are playing that day and I make brunch. Usually, this means Kevin gets up a little early and picks up Mom from Ecumen. Then they go grab a mocha at Moxie Java, where staff know her order by heart, which is super sweet but also ironic because they have no idea she’s midstage Alzheimer’s. Sometimes I kind of get a kick out of trying to see if she’ll pass as normal. Is that cruel?
I usually make an egg bake. Eggs, vegan sausage (yes, I see the contradiction), sharp cheddar cheese, almond milk, salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika and sometimes a little bit of cumin if we’re thinking about avocado toast as a side.
We all really like potatoes, and mom is still pretty good at helping me peel the skins off before we season and oil them. I’ll even let her stir them in the frying pan as long as she’s being supervised. And dear god, I don’t have children, but I imagine this is what it feels like to teach kids how to cook. A little anxiety about getting burned. Maybe some frustration about getting in the way. Only this is an unlearning, of course.
Mom once herself made egg bakes every Saturday on the weekends my dad decided he didn’t want to show up for us to make his famous canned corned beef hash with fried eggs and toast. Which was basically every Saturday, barring a few I can remember from our time at the lake cabin. I’m not sure why, but those meals always felt like an apology to me anyway. It was always better when Mom stuck with the egg bake routine. Dad was meant for other things that didn’t involve us.
I am supervising her peeling of potatoes this Saturday morning while Kevin gets the sunroom ready by tuning in the television that requires the antenna to be fully functioning to get local channels. It can be a fight, manipulating the paper-thin antenna left, right, up and down to find the right signal, and there’s got to be a better way to get free sports on TV in the 21st century, but here we are. It entertains Mom, nonetheless, to hear Kevin fighting with the reception from the other room, so there’s that. Her laugh is absolute life and always has been. I hope it always will be.
I’m whisking the eggs in a red Pyrex bowl I took with me from her house before we sold it. It is one of the few items I kept and covet and use almost every day. She’s abandoned her post at the peeling station and walks into the sunroom to check in on Kevin.
“Should we have a beer?” I hear her ask him.
“Do you need to even ask?” he replies.
It’s about 11 in the morning, so why not? We never allow her more than a small glass these days anyway because of the looks we get from staff if she ever shows up smelling like beer. I mean, dear god, she’s not a child. Is she? Maybe to them, it’s easiest to think of her in those terms. It’s easier to make sense of how she sees the world if I think of her as a 6 year old, not a 61-year-old. That I do know.
After I’m done whisking the eggs, I add cubes of cheese and some vegan sausage to the mix and stir. Mom’s made her way back next to me with a beer now. She’s “shadowing,” as they call it when someone with dementia doesn’t know what to do next so they stand very close to a person and mimic what that person is doing. Only Mom isn’t mimicking me. She’s actually complaining of a stomach ache, which immediately puts me into a lather, because she’s been having these moments when she just throws up for no reason.
I stop what I’m doing and look at her face. She doesn’t look particularly peeked, pale, or the opposite, red and clammy. But she is clutching her lower stomach like I do when I have pretty serious menstrual cramps. Knowing that can’t be what’s wrong, I ask her a few times what hurts.
“Is it your lower belly?”
“Yeah.”
“Or more near your ribs?”
“Yeah.”
“Or do you need to throw up?”
“Yeah. … No!” she laughs. “Why would I throw up?” Clearly she doesn’t remember throwing up in public on more than one occasion recently.
I tell her to stand where she is and watch me. I can hear the game kicking off and the announcers, with their British accents, doing their best to predict how the match will go today.
“Arsenal sure has had a tough year with so many players getting yellow cards,” one says.
“And that match against Man U was just a total disaster for them, too,” the other echoes.
The crowd is already at full decibel. Rowdy and ready to go. The singing and chanting makes a strange juxtaposition to the quiet of my mother in this moment.
I drop the egg mixture into the oven on 425 for an hour, wash my hands and start wiping down the counters when I hear something dripping and leaking onto the floor. Is the water pitcher leaking again? Did the beer spill? Has the cat tipped over his dish?
I turn to look at my mom and her face is pinched with a look of shame and embarrassment.
She is urinating. Her pants are soaked all the way through and down the legs, into her socks and shoes, and the urine is spreading onto the floor.
“Fuck, Mom! What are you doing?” I yell.
“I’m sorry,” she replies. “You hate me.”
Kevin walks into the entryway. “Oh, no. Oh, Beth.” He is sad for her.
“Christ, fucking take her home, will you?” I demand. “I have to clean this piss up now. Fuck.” It is not a good moment for me. Nor is it a good look on my conscience.
Mom starts to whimper. Kevin runs upstairs to grab a couple of towels and I fill the mop bucket to start cleaning up the urine.
All this time it wasn’t a stomach ache at all. She had to pee and didn’t have the right words to tell me that’s what needed to happen. And I was furious. With her. Then with myself for how I handled the situation. I am a terrible daughter. I soak the urine up with paper towels and then drop a cup of bleach all over the floor like she’s a goddamn virus or something.
I’m ashamed of her. I’m ashamed that she can’t tell me what she needs. I’m ashamed of myself. I’m ashamed that I can’t tell what she needs.
When Kevin comes back from dropping her off, he’s careful to tell me that everything is OK. They get her cleaned up quickly at the home and all is well.
“She felt really bad, you know,” he says. “She was saying ‘she hates me, she hates me’ the entire drive back to her place. I tried to tell her that wasn’t true.”
I’m not sure I don’t hate her right now. Or is it me I hate?
It’s just pee, I think. I’ve ruined our Saturday and the idea of my mom, who is so in her own prison most of the time just wanted to be with the people she loves, yet I couldn’t even give her that because of a little pee.
I stand by the oven and wait for the egg bake to finish cooking.
Maybe I’ll take a piece to Mom.
