Dementia Gave Me the Mother I Always Wanted
By Deborah Gaines
The summer before I turned 13, my mother dumped a macaroni-and-cheese casserole in my lap. Sizzling hot from the oven, it left an angry red mark in the shape of a spiral noodle on my thigh.
This wasn’t an accident; my stepfather, Jack, had roused her ire by playing tennis after work, and I’d chimed in to support him. “What’s the big deal?” I muttered, just as she walked into the dining room carrying the Pyrex dish on a tray.
“She didn’t mean that,” Jack said quickly, and we both instinctively ducked as the dish came slamming down. Luckily, it was a glancing hit, with the container and most of the noodles landing on the floor.
While Jack scrambled for an ice pack, my mother shrieked, “I hate this goddamned family!” Then she rushed upstairs and threw the contents of his tennis bag out the bedroom window.
I helped clean up the remains of our dinner while sneakers, tennis whites, and dirty socks rained down in the backyard. “Welcome to Morrisa’s Dinner Theater,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. “Want to go out for ice cream?”
Growing up, no one told me that episodes like these were abnormal; they seemed unpleasant but inevitable, like thunderstorms or stomach flu. My mother regularly slapped my face for transgressions like having a messy closet or forgetting to empty the dishwasher. She once threw a bicycle at me because I had left it in the driveway, blocking her car when she got home from work.
I was in my forties before I heard her back story: the grinding poverty of growing up during the Great Depression. A brutal, alcoholic father who attacked her in the shower, breaking two of her ribs, because she refused to give him the money she’d earned as a dog walker.
I got through my teen years by avoiding her as much as possible, studying at the library until it closed and grabbing leftovers from the fridge. As long as I kept my grades up, she never monitored my activities. “I’d better not see any B’s,” she would call as I slunk past the room where she was watching TV. As soon as she went to bed, I would sneak out again, sleeping at a friend’s house or lying in the grass of a local baseball field.
I graduated high school a year early and accepted a scholarship to Tel Aviv University, as far away from my mother as I could get. By then, I believed that life was fundamentally unsafe and filled with pain, and that no one, least of all me, had the right to be cherished. I told myself that I was strong and independent; that I could survive anything; and that I didn’t need anyone.
The next 20 years were a roller coaster, with dizzying highs — returning to the U.S., earning degrees from Yale and Columbia, and working as a travel writer for a New York newspaper — and stomach-churning lows. Although I was free from my mother’s violent rage, I sought out similarly dysfunctional relationships.
By the time I was 37, I had weathered two divorces and been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I had an infant daughter and was staying in a church basement to escape her emotionally abusive father after he drained our joint bank account.
My mother and Jack came to the hospital when Lila was born, seeming charmed by their first grandchild. That was the last I heard from them until eight months later, when they paid us a visit at the church in Hoboken.
Over lunch, my mother offered me the use of their guest bedroom while I regrouped. I stifled a gasp and accepted. Maybe becoming a grandmother had softened her? Whatever the reason, I was willing to try to reconnect.
We arrived at Baltimore Station on an icy afternoon three days later. I was toting the baby in a sling, together with a car seat, a stroller, and a backpack containing all of our belongings.
Jack met us on the platform. As soon as I saw his hangdog expression, I knew that my mother had backed out. “Morrisa thinks you’d be uncomfortable in the guest room,” he said, staring down at his shoes.
“Worse than a basement?” My face burned with sudden heat. In an instant, I was 12 years old again, embarrassed and ashamed to have expected anyone’s help. “Fine. We’ll leave in the morning.”
I’m strong and independent, I reminded myself. I don’t need anyone. But I knew this was no longer true. I needed help to raise Lila — a lot of help. She deserved a family who cherished her, and I had no idea how to provide one.
Standing on the platform with my eyes watering from the cold, I resolved to do whatever it took to create a safe home. If I didn’t know how to love myself, I could start by loving her.
Back in Hoboken, I went into counseling, found an Al-Anon group, and freelanced until I could afford a small apartment. Eventually, I got a job, and a few years later, remarried and moved to a bucolic suburb.
Jack died of a stroke at the age of 71. At the funeral, my mother asked if I would consider bringing Lila to see her in Florida, where they had recently retired.
The first visit went well. We stayed at a motel on the beach, and went on excursions to the Kennedy Space Center and to see manatees in the St. Johns River. My mother and I were overly polite, like prisoners being considered for parole.
I hated every minute of it, but Lila had a blast. She loved the drive-through Dairy Queen and all-you-could-eat pizza nights at Blackbeard’s. My mother took her to a thrift store that sold toys by the bag and let her buy anything she wanted.
After several months of nagging, I agreed to let her sleep over at Grandma’s house. I had business in Orlando and dropped her off on Sunday morning, picking her up Monday afternoon.
She was strangely quiet on the ride to the airport, in spite of having had lunch at Denny’s and going to see Finding Nemo. When pressed, she said that Grandma had been nice to her but, “She’s mean and she makes people sad.”
There were no more sleepovers.
The years slid by, filled with the joys and worries of daily life: work challenges, school band concerts, a garden that wouldn’t thrive no matter how much time I poured into it. Lila went off to NYU while her little brother, Andre, learned to play jazz saxophone.
My peaceful world was shaken when my husband was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 56, and nearly destroyed when he died three years later. One hot summer morning, I was getting ready to meet the estate lawyer when the phone rang.
It was my mother’s doctor. “I’m sure you know that Morrisa has dementia,” he said. (I didn’t.) “She’ll need to be closer to family.”
I’ve often wondered why I didn’t just hang up. But caring about others had become second nature in the years since Lila was born. My mother and I had both been widowed; maybe we could understand each other better now.
I moved her to a senior facility down the road from my Maplewood home, close enough for me to manage her care but with on-site services in case I couldn’t stand to do so. The first few months were awful. At 85, she was still fueled by rage, with the added frustration of cognitive decline. “My daughter institutionalized me so she could steal my money!” she told anyone who would listen. “She’s always been out for herself.”
I fervently hoped she would die quickly, although I was ashamed to share that sentiment with anyone but my therapist. Then I got a call saying the staff had found her on the floor of her room, paralyzed from the waist down.
This is it, I thought, lightheaded with relief. I even dug out the paperwork for her burial plot. But the ailment turned out to be treatable — a urinary tract infection that had spread to her kidneys. She spent 13 days in intensive care, her mind wandering in uncharted waters.
The first time she saw me afterwards, her face melted into a gentle smile. “My beautiful daughter,” she said to the nurse. “Aren’t I the luckiest woman alive?”
“You certainly are,” the nurse replied, adding, “Morrisa hasn’t stopped bragging about you since she woke up.”
“That’s — thanks.” I took a deep breath to steady myself as the shock reverberated through my system. Was it the medications she’d been given? The long period of semi-consciousness? I’d been warned the hospital stay might accelerate her dementia. Could loving kindness somehow be a symptom?
Whatever the reason, it quickly became clear that my mother’s short-term memory was shot. She didn’t know why she’d been hospitalized; she also had no idea what she’d eaten for breakfast, or when she’d last seen me. “Just drop by when you feel like it,” the nurse said. “It will be a wonderful surprise.”
When I did, instead of an endless stream of accusations, she offered gentle observations on how pretty the clouds looked and how much she liked my new scarf. Any activity I suggested was met with enthusiasm, from petting a therapy dog to attending a performance by the local glee club.
For the next year, until her death from a sudden heart attack, I visited my mother a few times a week. Sometimes we sat on the couch together, watching cat videos or episodes of Grace & Frankie. I leaned on her shoulder and she stroked my hair. When we held hands, her skin felt soft and delicate.
With each visit, my heart healed. My mother’s body was still there, but the woman who scarred me was gone. A lifetime of anger at her abuse, and the fact that she would never apologize or be held accountable, slowly dissolved into relief.
I like to think I finally got to know the person she always was, under the resentment and rage. A proud parent. An animal lover. A joyful human being.
I still can’t forgive her for our shared past. But for those few months at least, I’m grateful to have had a mother who cherished me.
