Feeding My Mother: Comfort and Laughter in the Kitchen as My Mom Lives with Memory Loss by Jann Arden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My grandmother, who lived to be 99, or so, started going downhill in her 90s. She used to tell me that when she turned 60, that was when it was the best years of her life. That until she got to that age, she was still being viewed as a wife and mother, but when she turned s60, no one cared about her, and she could live her life as she pleased. She was sharp as a tack, up until then. She drove a truck. She ran a small farm. She painted, and played cards, and made friends wherever she went. That is the grandmother I like to remember. But when she started slipping into dementia, when she started to go down hill, she was put in a “home”, by my aunt.
My mother hated that. She had hoped to have her mother come and live with her, but she was still working full time, and had kids living at home, and so she could only watch as her mother was “put away”, as she said. She resented that, and said she never wanted to be put in a home, ever.
So, we, my wife and I, agreed to let her live with us, after she suffered a series of strokes. None of my other siblings could handle her, or wanted to.
She can still mostly get around, and we send her off to senior classes during the day, to keep her busy, otherwise she will just sleep. She has not been diagnosed with dementia or alzheimer’s, yet, but I feel it will come to that, soon. She is forgetting more and more, which can sometimes be to our advantage, if we want her to think we told her something, when we didn’t.
I bring this up, because Jann could be writing about my mother. Reading this book, reminds me of the things my mother has said, though her memory loss isn’t quite as bad as Jann’s mom. I could so relate to everything thing in this book, could so sympathize with Jann, and what she was going through.
One of the things that Jann brings up is how this version of her mother is not the one she wants. What happened to the version of her mother that was goodness and light. It is hard. I still quote things that my mother has said to me, in the past, and say things to others such as “the old version of my mother said this.”
The book takes place over a three year period, where her father dies, and her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Apparently, Jann is a Canadian singer/song writer, and is often traveling, so she can’t be there for her parents, and feels guilty about it, but at least she was there when her father died, which she would think would upset her mother. But her mother insists that if you want to be sad you can, but there is not use in dwelling on it.
And the quotes she brings up are great. I have written down my mother’s best ones, but not often enough to make a book like this one.
I have so many favorites, it is hard to pick the best, but here is a timely one. They are discussing the state of the world.
“You have to keep going no matter what,” she says as she looks out the window at two squirrels racing up a tree.”He should spend a few hours every day watching squirrels–that would help him.”
I think she is talking about Trump and that makes me kind of snort.
“You never know, Mom. That might help him.”
And then she says, “Well, they must have squirrels on the planet he comes from.”
Although there are recipes, don’t pick up the book for that. Pick it up for the humor, and stay for the philosophy.
