The Cruel Fate I Fear Most About Aging

I’m reminded of it every September

According to the Alzheimer’s Society website, there are nearly 50 million people living with dementia worldwide. My mother-in-law was one of them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother-in-law as September is World Alzheimer’s Month with the 21st of September marking World Alzheimer’s Day. It’s a time for reflection on the impact dementia has had on my family’s life.

When dementia was a joking matter

I’ve joked about having dementia when I’ve forgotten things, I can’t find the right word for something, or I do something clumsy. You tell yourself everyone has these moments. It’s normal when you’re tired, stressed or distracted. It’s scary to contemplate dementia as the cause.

Scattiness is a normal part of aging. Until it affects my daily life in a serious way, I’m not worried.

Maybe the early signs had always been there with my mother-in-law

It was rare to see my mother-in-law happy. With her fair share of hardship and sad events in her life, she had good cause.

She raised her two boys as a single mum and later remarried. My brother-in-law was Bipolar and passed away in 2008. Five years later, we lost my husband’s stepfather to Parkinson’s.

My mother-in-law’s house was full to the brim with stuff she couldn’t bring herself to discard, even items she had no use for. Research suggests there is a link between depression and hoarding in the elderly.

My mother-in-law loved a freebie and hated waste. She often came to our house armed with items she had collected – things none of us needed. Sharing her hoard with us was her way of expressing love.

She also brought over piles of paperwork she needed help with and busied herself fussing over that instead of playing with her grandchildren.

My mother-in-law was similar to my parents in that she repeated herself a lot. As a child, it was irritating when my parents kept asking me the same question I had answered numerous times before because it felt like they never listened to what I had to say. As an adult, you try harder to remain calm and kind.

As her illness progressed, my mother-in-law became a less stressed version of herself. Instead of offloading on us when she came to visit, she became quieter, like she was becoming at peace with herself.

She stopped doing activities she previously enjoyed like reading, watching television, and listening to the radio. I’m not sure whether it was because she didn’t want to or she couldn’t. Our regular Facetime calls to her stopped when we realised she could no longer operate the iPad herself.

The inevitable decline

Your parents spend years looking after you and bringing you up. It’s tough when you see they can no longer look after themselves. So you do your best to help them even though it feels like it’s never going to be enough.

Some days I felt close to running on empty just from looking after our two children who were two and six when my mother-in-law was on the decline.

My husband installed a camera in his Mum’s home to help keep an eye on her. That was how we discovered she was spending a lot of time sleeping on the sofa during the day. It’s a common symptom of later-stage dementia. As the disease progresses, the damage to a person’s brain becomes more extensive and they become more frail. It becomes exhausting to do even simple tasks.

During one of her last Facetime conversations with my husband, my mother-in-law told him she was throwing her poo out of the window of her flat. It was like she’d forgotten it belonged in the toilet. During one of her visits to our home, she attempted to put it down the sink.

We first realised there was a serious problem when my mother-in-law was admitted to hospital after taking a fall in the street. She had left home in the middle of the night and a kind stranger helped her after finding her injured and confused.

We hired a carer to visit my mother-in-law’s home several times a day to help with her basic needs. She hadn’t been eating properly and was losing a lot of weight. Eventually, she reached the stage where she required more permanent, long-term care and that was when she was admitted into hospital again.

She died about a month later. I remember the day well. It was the day before my son’s seventh birthday on which he was also performing in his school nativity.

Alongside the sadness, I felt relief she was dead. She had already lost her spirit to dementia and was ready to leave us.

A time for reflection

When my husband and I sat down with the vicar who would be performing my mother-in-law’s funeral, it was an effort to peel back the Alzheimer-ridden version of her and remember what she was like before she became ill. At the end of the meeting, it felt like we’d only given the man whose job it was to present a picture of someone he’d never met, a sliver of information to work with.

What it made me realise is I didn’t really know my mother-in-law, but I can keep her in my heart with memories of when she was happy. Here is what springs to mind.

I remember the first time we met. She invited me to lunch at her house after my husband and I started dating. As I stepped into the dining room, I was greeted by a lady, a little over five foot beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She was thrilled her son was dating a Chinese girl.

I later realised she had put a lot of effort into lunch, making a lovely Chinese noodle stir-fry dish. Normally, cooking for her involved opening a tin, or preparing easy stick-in-the oven food.

My mother-in-law’s second marriage was a happy one and it gave her the opportunity to enjoy holidays sailing around the world on cruises. I wondered how the other guests on board took to her. My mother-in-law was fearless when it came to speaking her mind and at times I found her tactless. Others were entertained rather than offended by her.

My mother-in-law signed up to be a film and television extra. I suspect there were not many oriental elderly ladies on the casting agency’s books because whenever there was a need, my mother-in-law often got picked.

She didn’t do it because she wanted to be famous or meet A-list celebrities. She wasn’t even interested in being in front of the camera. She did it because she liked the food and getting paid to hang around on set while doing very little.

I think of my mother-in-law when I go about my day-to-day life. When I reach for the small packet of tissues I keep in my handbag, I remember how she used to drop off multiple packets during her visits to our home.

When I visit cafes and fast food restaurants with my family, I pick up way more napkins than I need in anticipation of an inevitable spillage by one of my offspring. When I pop the surplus napkins left at the end of the meal into my handbag, I think of my mother-in-law’s kitchen shelves which would be piled high with not just napkins, but also plastic cutlery, packets of sugar, and tiny cartons of UHT milk she had accumulated over the years.

Final thoughts

Witnessing my mother-in-law’s deterioration was one of the hardest experiences I’ve had to deal with. Watching a loved one struggle is overwhelming and stressful. You feel out of your depth trying to cope.

Knowing many other families are going through the same thing with a loved one doesn’t make it easier. However, it does offer comfort by making you feel less alone.

Dementia strips away a person’s ability to maintain their independence, safety, and dignity. It’s cruel and that’s why it’s what I fear most about aging.

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