Memories are Tricky Things

Back when I was 9 or 10, I remember me and my Mom and a couple of my sisters were sitting around talking, and I brought up an occasion from a couple of years before. I had been hospitalized with pneumonia, and the family was going up to the lake for the weekend, and they all stopped by the hospital before they left.


At which point my sisters began laughing hysterically, and informed me that it never happened. And I was all, "It did TOO! It did TOO happen! Mom, remember?"

And my Mom, who I am sure was trying very hard not to laugh, assured me that said incident had never taken place, that the only time I was ever in the hospital was when I was born, that they would certainly not go out of town if I was hospitalized, etc. That I must have dreamed about this at some point, and somehow the dream had become real to me.

And I remember feeling crestfallen and very confused, because I was SO SURE that it had happened.

I wonder if this is how my Mom feels now. She has Alzheimer's, and will come up with the craziest stories, and if we tell her (gently) that what she is saying did not happen, she often replies with, "It did TOO!" She can really get angry, insisting that yes, that man DID stop by to deliver a cake, but she wouldn't sign for it, and now Tib's going to be really mad because the man delivered the cake somewhere else. And she really BELIEVES that this actually happened.

I don't try to reason with her anymore, after it was pointed out to me that trying to reason with someone with Alzheimer's is really, really pointless. Now I just nod my head and sympathize, and if she wants to talk for a while about the man with the cake, that's okay with me.




Alzheimer's sucks.