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Lost and Found
The first time I lost Mom was at age 79, after a stroke. Dementia/Alzheimer’s abducted my mother, the adventurer, gardener
and hiker. My confidante, greatest ally and unconditionally loving mom was losing to this disease. I fully expected at first
that the effects of the stroke could be almost erased with state-of-the-art rehabilitation and good follow-through at home.
I trained at BGSU in speech therapy and special education in the 1970s. As an energetic co-ed, I was “on fire” and determined
that the glass was truly “half full”; I lived by the mantra of those days, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part
of the problem.” Twenty some years in the field working with children made me confident that slow, steady progress could be
made. However, cruel Alzheimer’s operates in reverse–steady declines with excruciating glimpses of the former self teased
us all before the rapid decline.
The roller coaster of emotions as Mom’s lucid moments made it seem she had been found: awakened from a nightmare, full of
questions and panic, only to lose her again. An oasis of fond moments manifested as Mom remembered old songs, poems and precious
moments from our childhood. Tantalized into thinking she was back, only to lose her the next moments to a hostile, angry person
masquerading as Mom. Some days it seemed she faded gradually as a photo left too long exposed to harsh light. Others were
like a fog obliterating a magnificent mountain, so clear and bold only minutes before, now indistinguishable from clouds?
Sky? Trees? How can the familiar so easily slip from view?
As the cruel disease advanced, Mom became less anxious and I, the now-parent, became more anxious. How could she forget her
first grandson or the death of her own mother decades before, and yet clearly recall the words to a World War II love song?
The incongruity of this distorted picture confounded me until the day I decided to simply accept this state of lost–hers and
mine–and float with her through hazy moments.
Sitting had to be enough–no words to muddle life further. Mom died on July 30, 2007, with my youngest brother and me by her
side. Shortly after, she was found again, in memories of a woman we knew as children, surfacing in photo albums as the beautiful,
smiling lady beaming in her WAC uniform, holding her babies and standing proudly at all the best life events. Mom is free
from the murky beast of Alzheimer’s now, no longer held captive and forever … “found.”
Sandra Laucher Button ’73 | Education–Deaf and Hearing Impaired
Charlevoix, Mich.
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