Back-to-School in Alzheimer’s Memories

“I must get home,” an Alzheimer’s patient insisted when I visited Mother at the nursing home.  “The children are coming home from school.”

She did this every afternoon, I learned.  About the time her children, during their school years, would have come home from school, she became restless, walking the hallway and insisting she must get home before the children did.  Some instinct made her aware that it was afternoon.  Her mind took her back to that era when her children were young.  (They now are adults with children of their own and are responsible for her care.)

Mother’s School Memories 

           My mom never insisted, while at the nursing home, that she had to get home before we children arrived from school.  However, she sometimes related her school teaching memories.  Mother had been a teacher in a one-room school before we children were born. (That was during the era when married women generally weren’t hired and definitely had to give up their position when they became pregnant).  However, Mother enjoyed teaching and encouraged my sister and me to attend teacher’s college and get our degrees (wich we did). 

Often, I found that Mother’s memories lapsed back to her teaching days, her days at teacher’s training school, or her own days in school.  She reminisced about walking with her sister and brothers to attend the one-room school house in Milan, New York.  (Yes, she did walk three miles, because I’ve measured it.  Also, it was uphill much of the way home.) 

Record the Memories 

            While Mother still could verbalize her memories, I wrote some of them down for our family history, to share with future generations.   Who didn’t have to walk three miles to school! 

Perhaps when your family member thinks it’s time for the children to come home from school, or simply reminisce in general, you can get him/her talking about those days.  While they reminisce write or tape those incidents.  Otherwise, they’ll be lost forever.