She never knew if she was in a car or truck or what color it was. She went in the men’s bathroom at WalMart one day. I watched her stand and look at the signs on the door before she went in, and I thought surely she knew the woman picture, BUT, before I could stop her, she went in the wrong one. I was horrified and still don’t know if there was a man in there. When she came out, I didn’t say anything and neither did she, so I guess she never knew what she did.

She would hide stuff and forget where it was. We would go over and search everywhere and she was really good at hiding things. She would hide food, candy, keys, money, her purse, anything she thought someone might steal from her. I asked her why she hid her purse when she went to bed at night and she said ‘cause if someone broke in, they wouldn’t steal it. I couldn’t make her understand that would be the least of her worries if someone broke in.

I have found things in places like cookie jars, under furniture, in closets, and cabinets, in drawers. One time I found a check that we had been expecting in the mail, hidden in the closet in the bottom of a box. It’s a wonder I found it and cashed it while it was still good burt she didn’t know anything about it and swore up and down that SHE never saw that check and it never came in her mail.

I also searched the house a million times for her hearing aids which she always lost somewhere. Most of the times I found them under her chair where they fell out when she slept in the chair and were knocked under it. One time she wanted to lend Bill (her son) some money, and I went to the bank and got the cash and gave it to her because she threw a fit about not being able to take it home and told her to be careful with it and thought surely she could get home with it, but I was worried. Well, she took it and walked out of my house with it and when she got home, she didn’t have a clue where that money was. She stayed up all night looking and she didn’t want to call me and tell me she had lost it. Finally, the next morning she called and told me she had lost $800.00. She was worn out. I was sick. We went out and looked all over our yard and then went to her house and started to search in the care, in the yard and house. We looked everywhere and then I got her purse and looked through it and there was the money, stuck way back in it in a pocket. She had looked through it a 100 times all night. Well, that was the last time I would let her have cash over a few dollars. We sure knew every inch of that house ‘cause we searched it so many times.

She couldn’t remember how to take her pills and when she couldn’t do that, we tried everything. First I sat out all the bottles on the cabinet and wrote on them when to take them. That didn’t work and next I would put them all in one of those cases and I would go back and she would have poured them all out, or all in together, and said she didn’t touch it. Someone else always did it. We hit on putting them in envelopes and writing on the outside if she should take them morning or night, and the day and date and seal them up. That’s worked for a little while. She would go get the paper and find out what day it was and then get the pill envelopes and take those pills. Then, she couldn’t do that anymore either. I would find several envelopes open at once, or none had been taken. No telling what she took. We kept a calendar on the cabinet and she used it a lot ‘till she couldn’t read it anymore. It was so pitiful to watch her stand there and look and study on things and just couldn’t figure them out.

She would turn the thermostat up or down and then call us and say she hadn’t touched it and she was freezing, or burning up, whatever the case was, and we would go over and the thing was turned way up or way down. She would get really mad if we said she had touched it and swear she didn’t. She had two laser surgeries and two cataract surgeries during this time. We had to go over and put in her eye drops four times a day for weeks, with each one. One night she put nose drops in her eyes, thinking it was her eye drops, and we thought she had blinded herself for sure, and I took her to have them checked, but it was ok. I had told her to NEVER put the drops in by herself, to always wait for me to do it, so I hid the drops. Her eyesight continued to worsen and the doctor said it was Alzheimer’s taking her sight and there was nothing else to do.

Once she got lost coming from the other side of town and drove for hours before getting home. Another time she got lost just going to a party at a house she had been to 100 times, and a house that was around the corner from where I used to live and she couldn’t find that house, and she was really late getting there, but she had to stop the mail man and ask him where the house was. She shouldn’t have been driving as long as she was allowed to. Once she was coming home and pulled in her carport, got out and went round to the passenger side to get something out. She had locked the doors and slammed the back door or her hand. There she was with her fingers caught in the car door and she couldn’t open the door, the car was locked, she was between the carport wall and the car, it was where people couldn’t see her and it was getting dark. She hung there and screamed till she had no voice left. By the grace of God, the next door neighbor decided to look out his back door before he went to bed and heard this little voice and came out to look, and found her. If not for that, she would have hung there all night and who knows what would have happened to her. Dr. Brown (her neighbor) told us he NEVER opened that door before he went to bed. He called us, and as usual, we ran over. He had checked her hand and said it wasn’t broken. I was surprised it didn’t break her fingers, but it didn’t, just bruised them, but she was to tired from standing there screaming for hours, that she was ready to go to bed. BUT, do you think that would stop my mama from driving? GUESS? NO WAY.

Driving was where we had to fight her the hardest and after several wrecks, we told her she just couldn’t drive anymore. We had also seen her trying to open the hood with the key, thinking it was the trunk, and leaving the car in gear when she got out of it, and locking her keys in the car when she got out. Once I saw her trying to find where the hole was to put the key in to start it. She didn’t know where the wipers were, or the headlights or anything. She couldn’t see or hear good either. All her neighbors were scared when they saw her coming. They got out of the way. Irv kept her car broke down when he could. My brother fought us on the driving thing, which made it harder to do. He believed she should be allowed to keep driving as long as she wanted to. In fact, while we were breaking down the car, Bill was fixing it. One birthday, he gave her a car wash and oil change for her gift at the same time that we thought the car was broken down, and Irv got mad and told him he was stupid, and Bill didn’t speak to us for a long time after that. That hurt me a lot, since I only have one brother and didn’t want to lose him. I never understood why he wouldn’t see, but he wasn’t around like I was and she fooled him too, I guess.

I finally set my foot down. After she gave up driving, she would go out and pull the car in and out of the carport, just to think she was driving, I guess. It was hard on her to know she couldn’t do it anymore. She never got out of the driveway, though, to our surprise, but she had promised me, and somehow remembered that I told her she couldn’t drive anymore and she didn’t. But it scared us that she would forget and finally she told Irv to take the car away and he did that very day. The neighbors were all really happy. We knew how much giving up her car hurt her, so we continued to take her places; anywhere, because she always wanted to GO, and had all her life. Anytime we said, “GO,” she was ready. We would come and take her out to eat, I took her to church and took her shopping.