Looking to the Past for Today’s Alzheimer’s Explanation

“Do you see the cows in the corn field?”  Mother asked.  “You must get them out.”

She sat in the rocking chair in her living/dining room combination, looking toward the window over the kitchen sink in the alcove. 

“Where are they, Mother?”

“Over there in the corn field,” Mother insisted.  “They’re eating all the corn.” 

We didn’t have a corn field nor cows.  And this was before I learned I had to look to the past to determine which era Mother was living in that day. I finally convinced her I’d take care of the cows and make sure they didn’t destroy the corn.

Then all was calm until another day when Mother insisted there was a deer in the pasture next to the corn.  When I questioned her further, Mother went to the window over the sink and pointed.

“There, near the woods,” she said.

Then I realized where we were…back to the days of my childhood.  For I saw, from her kitchen window in the little retirement home my dad had built near the old farmhouse, the fields beyond the tumbled down barn where Father once planted corn.  Beyond this was a pasture, and then the woodland.

When I was a child, we’d look out the window above the farmhouse kitchen sink (a window my dad installed for my mom so she could look at the farm, fields, and animals as she washed dishes).  From there we often saw deer grazing in the pasture at twilight.  Occasionally the cows escaped from their pasture or the barnyard and got into the corn, trampling it down while they munched.

Once I realized where we were and in which era, Mother’s comments made sense.  We then reminisced about those days of my childhood and had a lovely conversation.