Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, dear Mama. Happy Birthday to you.
On Tuesday, April 23rd, my mother will turn 66 years old. It should be a day of celebration. She should be able to decide where she wants to go for dinner. She should be able to open her gifts on her own and enjoy them. She should do whatever her heart desires on her day. It should be a day filled with love, laughter, and a little luxury for my mama.
She won’t be doing any of those things on her birthday. She will be in a nursing home, eating whatever it is they are serving in the cafeteria that day. She won’t be able to open any gifts, and frankly, at this point it’s hard to even think of something to give her. If we are lucky and she is having a good day, maybe she will be able to sit outside for a few minutes and enjoy the chocolate cake my father is bringing for her, but there is no way of knowing. There is no way of knowing if she will even understand that it’s her birthday. There is no way of asking her what she would like for her special day. There is no way of celebrating her in any significant way.
This is true for any given day. It’s the nature of the disease. I could travel 3.5 hours to see my mother only to have her scream the entire time I am there. I can go to visit her and she could be asleep the whole visit. I can make the trip to be with her and she will have no recollection of who I am.
Or, she could be smiling. And laughing. She could be singing and chatty. She could squeeze my hand tight and give me a kiss. And once in a while, she can still even mutter, so very softly, “I love you.”
Those are the days that I hang on to with every part of me. It’s all I have left of her. The faint I love you’s. The occasional hand squeeze. The kiss on my cheek. Any brief moment of recognition when I know she knows it’s me, her daughter. Any sign that my mom is still in there, still my mama.
It feels impossible to celebrate my mother in this condition. Even saying Happy Birthday is uncomfortable for me. There is no true happiness here. I do not want to celebrate my mom getting a year older like this. I actually dread it. For every year older she gets, she gets that much closer to the end of the life expectancy for someone suffering from Alzheimer’s.
I will not celebrate that. I cannot celebrate that.
May your birthday be as peaceful as it can be, Mama.
I will be right here, thinking of you, with an immense amount of love and grief.
For My Mama 