Presenting a (not particularly) Scientific Argument on the Concept of Wandering Dementia™.
Not to be confused with dementia wandering, an annoyance of a different color entirely.
Smoosh the heart, baby. Just do it. For me. Smoosh it. ❤️
Remember when Mom broke her hearing aide?1
Remember when getting a new one was a game changer, rolling her dementia back a year or two to happier days?2
Remember how giddy that made me, like we’d found a cure?
Ah, no. Remember, dementia is a rollercoaster and there is no cure, only bandaids.
She’s back to where she was before the new hearing aid.
Which “was” am I talking about you ask?
The “was” when she slept through everything day & night and we called her “Coma Mommy” and were positive it was the end and put her on hospice? Then bounced back as if she hadn’t just Sleeping Beautied her way through the last few weeks?
The “was” when showed up almost seven years ago with a broken back and they said she had a year left, maybe? Then bounced back and was making regular jaunts (if one can jaunt using a rollator) to the farmer’s market?
The “was” when she had Covid or when was on oxygen and a nebulizer and antibiotics for the pneumonia? Then she bounced back the same way she did from cancer (six times)? CAN-Fucking-CER!
The “was” after last Thanksgiving when we put her on hospice, again, and prepped for the inevitable, “she’s not going to make it into 2025”? Then, came roaring back?3
I tend to personify Mom’s dementia as a nomad, wandering much like the floaters that’d blocked a good part of her vision, that she made friends with and played with in the morning like a black blobby puppy because it was alway there, accompanying her…somewhere.4
There used to be a theory that womens’ hysteria was caused by wandering wombs. Most people know that’t not true anymore, because…Actual Science.
But, consider this, Wandering Dementia™ (brought to you by Anecodotal Science)
It’d explain why she’s coherent and linear with the invisible friends (who, b.t.dubs, could use some new hearing aids of their own, they need her to speak VERY LOUDLY TO THEM THESE DAYS. They only seem to be hard of hearing in the middle of the night. And the early mornings. Now, I’m no expert on auditory problems, but the invisibles either have selective hearing or perhaps Wandering Deafness, but I digress).
Wandering Dementia™ would explain why she can now see Kevin the cat (Hi, baby!”) then have a lengthy conversation with a shrub and the boy in the lace kitchen curtains.
Her dementia seems to float, going here & there, all willy-nilly, pell-mell, helter-skelterish. Like an old lamp with faulty wiring, on & off with no rhyme or reason, no pattern, and always when you most need it to be on, it leaves her in the dark.
A million lifetimes ago, I went to the est seminars. I remember very little outside of the part where you’re not allowed to leave the room to pee. But, I remember the name of the seminars.
Be Here Now.
Because of Wandering Dementia™—and this is why it’s so hard to make plans of any kind—all my social engagements and appointments always have a caveat of, “Unless, ya know, Mom,” and I’m not talking about her dying because there seems to be very little chance of that happening. Ever.
Be Here Now.
Being present. Not dwelling in the past. Not future tripping. Not even two seconds into the future tripping. Now. And Now. And Now.
It’s been a good paradigm for life in general, these chaotic times in particular. I do my research (when she’s gone, will I move to Israel, Iceland a mountaintop in Mexico?), knowing that any second, everything can change. For better, worse—or just for different.
The Be Here Now mentality keeps me from panicking, making snap decisions or doing rash things even though snap decisions and rash things can be a lot of fun.
Lifetimes ago, I was knew for a fact I’d die at 23, and rather than living a big joyous life in the few years I had left, it was a promise that no matter what I did, I couldn’t die until then. So, I took myself to the edge of death. Often. A lot of questionable choices were made.
The fact is, I don’t know when I’m going to die.
I don’t know when/if Mom is going to die (I know you say, of course she will, everybody does. Yeah, don’t be so sure of that…)
I don’t know what’s going to happen to this country, to the world, to Israel and Gaza and Ukraine, to Greenland and California. Maybe aliens will tractor beam a bus full of Bozos into the belly of their craft. On the Bozo bus: Felon47 & his entire administration & his entire gene pool progency, the Proud Boys, Marjorie Taylor Greene & Lauren Boebert, Elon & his entire gene pool progeny, Roger Stone, the white supremacists, the patriarchy, the pro-natalists, the Guardians of Faith & the Eyes of God, and all the corporate and academic executives who caved to the anti-DEI EO, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, racists—it’s a really, really big bus. Maybe aliens will just Hoover that bus into their spaceship, fly away and do all kinds of Nazi-like medical & psychological experiments on them to see if they can be made into better people.
You don’t know.
They never found Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Pan Am Flight 914?
Where’d Amelia Earhart go? DB Cooper?
You don’t know.
My point is, we don’t know. I don’t know. Mom’s dementia, forcing me to be in the moment over and over actually makes living through all of this easier to bear.
As a Jew, I believe in miracles. It’s in our DNA—it’s got nothing to do with religion, there are just things you can’t explain. Plus, I’m a writer, not a scientist, so you had me at electricity and running hot and cold water.
So, maybe she has Wandering Dementia™.
There are stories of dementia patients becoming coherent at the very end, it’s called Terminal Lucidity. How’s that work? Do all the plaques trot over somewhere else? Raquel Welch and the crew of the Proteus swam in and did CPR on dead brain cells? Or—say it with me…Wandering Dementia™.
You don’t know. You don’t know everything.
That’s my take on the “arc” of dementia, at times it can be more zig zag or scattershot. But, I might be wrong. What's your experience been?
Thank you for reading. If you like what you see, Don’t Keep It a Secret!
Did you smoosh the heart. No? Do it now. Smoosh. ❤️
🩵 Buy me a hot cuppa now and then…and then, smoosh.❤️
Hello Jodi, I love to read your lived experience: honest, raw, wise, and always laced with a proper dose of humor.
This line hits me: "My point is, we don’t know. I don’t know. Mom’s dementia, forcing me to be in the moment over and over actually makes living through all of this easier to bear."
Thank you.
And you're not dead until you're dead. Savoring the zig-zag wandering with you.
Hugs, P
Your kindness, humor, and patience are an inspiration for me. My father has late-stage Parkinson's and not even being a full-time caretaker, it's just so damn hard. I wish I had even a smidge of your grace, which I keep hoping will rub off on me even a little.