Starting the New Year with Mother & Alzheimer’s

When Jim and I moved Mother from her home in New York State, 275 miles to ours in New Hampshire, it was soon after New Year’s in 1992.  We’d planned to make the change toward the end of January, after we’d gotten our home ready. 

However, when I awoke Christmas morning (we were spending the holiday with her) and couldn’t find Mother, I became alarmed.  I looked out the front door and then the back, called and called.  I got Jim up and we scurried through the house.  No Mother.  Then we began piling on our outdoor clothes to venture into the near zero cold. 

When I opened the back door again, there was Mother plodding through a couple inches of snow up the slop from the garage, calling, “Kitty, Kittty, Kitty.”  She wore a sweater over her night gown, a scarf around her neck, socks and slippers.

I hurried her into the house, exclaiming, “Mother, you could have frozen.”

“I’m not cold,” she replied.  “I couldn’t find Kitty.”

At the sound of her name, Kitty stretched from the rocker where she’d been curled nice and warm.  (Whether she appeared there after Mother went outside or was there all the time, I don’t know.)  Mother also had circumvented the locks we’s placed on the doors in her foray outside to look for Kitty.

We knew then we had to take Mother home with us.  We could not leave her there, alone much of the time, when we were away.

So a few days after New Year’s, Mother, Kitty, Jim and I made our journey to New Hampshire to start out 1992 on a new adventure.