(This is part of the Brejcha Personal and Disability Resource Site, and after reading this page you can Click here for a Menu . But for now, Welcome to my:
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Note: This was first published in the May 23, 2002 issue of Metro, Philadelphia's excellent new daily newspaper distributed free.
©2002, F. Alexander Brejcha.
Mother's day has come and gone, which ironically is appropriate as I write this quick reflection following a Mother's day visit - a visit and a day that was filled with foreboding.
I wish I could say it was because my mother passed away, but – as horrible as it sounds, it is because she has not. (NOTE: March 2007 my mother passed away.). But I cry every time I manage to get away to visit her (not easy because extensive M.S.-related disabilities make me dependent on attendant care to keep working my full-time job and I have to keep a strict schedule). But I grieve for a mother and friend lost to a horrible affliction known as Alzheimer's.
Here is a woman who in 1968, after my dad knocked up (what a euphemism) one of her students and they understandably divorced, picked up her life and 10 year old son to leave her comfortable teaching job in the placid little Swedish town of Åmål and move to America. As an aside, I was excited as this was my second exposure to "the States", after a shorter stay in 1964 when my English consisted of "My mother works at American Field Service", "I like hamburgers", and "can I get you a Coke from the machine?". What more does a six year-old boy need? The latter was guaranteed to get me a soft drink also, along with a "Oh, how polite your little man is.". See: I learned from America early on. I should have gone into politics.
But in 1968, my first memory was a cab ride down the wrong direction of a one-way street in New York accompanied by a cigar-hoarsened: "Hey, Lady. Doan worry. We's only gone one way!". And some people wonder why I became a writer when M.S. ruined my art studies. Another radical life-change brought up recollections of an earlier one?
But mom got a job as a newspaper editor in Denver, remarried to an engineer who stayed faithfully with her for thirty years until his tragic death as the new millennium was starting, got her Ph.D., and then started her own business as a multilingual Interpreter/Translator. And despite some cyberphobia, with a little coaching from me (an ironic role-reversal), she moved beyond a dedicated Word Processor to learn WordPerfect and e-mail to facilitate her work. And as each of us progressed in our lives, we remained close and best of friends with frequent mutual visits – until early and rapidly progressing Alzheimer's all too quickly robbed her of all her hard-won skills and abilities and forced her... confinement... to a superb Alzheimer's-specific nursing home. But a gilded cage is still a prison to a woman used to traveling the world and tending to her garden. Just as my deluxe power wheelchair and modified mini-van are prisons to me. The bond remains.
She knows at times a degree of what she's lost – especially her husband and her beautiful house. And when she remembers with anguished cries, they cut like knives because I can do nothing. Except keep an eye on her care and read the latest research. Both of us, knowingly or not, have a very personal stake in supporting the political hot potato of stem cell research which holds promise for so many people with various disabilities. What will the winds of political whimsy blow our way next?
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