When it was time for Jonathan (my grandson) to be born, we took her with us to Kansas City for the birth. We had a time with her and it was at that time that we saw how bad she could really be.

At the hospital, when we went to eat in the lunchroom, she jumped in front of everyone else in line, knocked them down to get to the food bar, and grabbed up all the spoons and after she put the food in her plate, or dropped it everywhere, threw them in the food; handles and all. She didn’t want us to help her. She really embarrassed us.

We had to let her hold Jonathan, but with one of us right under her, in case she dropped him. She would never have admitted to anything being wrong with her.

We took her to Memphis to visit her brothers. One was in the nursing home. I wasn’t an easy trip either. Gene was sitting in his wheelchair in this awful nursing home and mama walked in and said,” Look, I have to use this old walking stick now.” She didn’t just say it one time, but over and over. I know it hurt his feelings ‘cause he couldn’t get up at all.

While we were in Memphis, we stayed at Tunica because the casino’s had cheap hotels. Mama wanted to play a slot machine, so we said, “what the heck.” We couldn’t help but laugh because I gave her a nickel and she put it in and it would drop right through and out the bottom because the machine didn’t except nickels, and she thought she had won. She sat for the longest time and put the same nickel in the top and watched it fall out the bottom and thought she was winning and got excited at all the nickels she was winning. We never told her any difference ’cause she was having fun and she needed some and she never asked where all her big money winnings were. One time we took her to a Big mall and when we got to the escalator and stepped on it, Irv and I on each side of her, holding her arms, she freaked out and started to scream, ”I’M FALLING!” We didn’t know what to do and people were looking and wondering what kind of a nut we had. It was the kind of escalator that went down half way and then you had a landing and then you had to get on again to go the rest of the way down. She got on the landing and wouldn’t move. We had to force her on, screaming and fighting us, or we would have still been on that landing. We finally got her off and she said she would never get on those moving steps again. We found out the hard way that things you wouldn’t expect will scare to death someone with Alzheimer’s. We never took her on one again, that’s for sure. Boy, that was an experience.

One time we were eating at Taco Bell and Irv was sitting across from her and she sneezed right into Irv’s food and didn’t say anything. She said, “Well, why aren’t you eating?” He just said he wasn’t hungry. She just shrugged and kept eating. She never knew what she had done. Mama would call us at all times because she never knew if it was night or day or what time it was. She would call many nights and say someone rang her doorbell at midnight. She would say she called the police to report it but we checked and they had not gotten any such call from her. We were afraid to take the phone off the hook, so we just had to get woke up.

One tine we went off to Memphis for a couple of days getaway and didn’t ask her to go and she called everyone we knew in town and out of town, and told them that we had left town and stole all her money. A lot of them believed her. Lord knows what some people thought of me. When I got back to town, she was on my answering machine 100 times saying, ”Patty, why would you do this to me? Why did you steal all my money?” Over and over.

I told her, “Mama, you KNEW I didn’t do that, why did you say it?”

She said because she was mad that we didn’t take her with us. I still don’t know if she did that for meanness or if she couldn’t help it, ’cause later she didn’t remember that she did it at all.

Every Sunday I would come and get her and take her to church and Sunday school. It got worse and worse that she couldn’t get ready and I was always late. I came earlier and earlier to get her dressed. I would lay out her clothes the day before. She would say she could be ready, but she couldn’t dress herself. No matter how hard she tried or how early she got up, she couldn’t do it. Finally, it got to the place where I would get there and she would be sitting on her bed with her slip on over her dress, or a skirt and dress on together, or her bra on over her shirt, or things on backwards or things that didn’t go together and I would have to dress her. Everything in her closet would be all over the room. It was awful. I would always tell her it’s OK, I will help you, and I did ‘till about a week before she fell and broke her hip.

It was March 10, 2004, and I was cooking supper. The phone rang and someone said, ”Your mama’s fallen.” I turned off the burners and hollered for Irv and Blake, and we ran over. I felt so sorry for her. She looked at me and said, ”OH, I HOPE NOTHING’S BROKE.” She couldn’t move her leg. She was so scared. All the neighbors were there with her. I thank the Lord that she had good neighbors that would check on her. We called the ambulance and they took her to the hospital. She was just a couple of weeks short of 89 years old at that time. In fact, she had her 89th birthday at the hospital, didn’t remember it and never remembered one since. She never could walk again by herself, either.

The fall and the surgery turned our life around and started us down another awful path of hospitals and nursing homes, big strokes, mini strokes, more falls and this most horrible disease called Alzheimer’s. It will take everything from you and after a very LONG illness and a lot of suffering, it will take your life. It took my little mama when she was 92 years old after many years of suffering for her and her family.