Mum-meries 7: Do you remember?

So Mother’s Day has come and gone for the year. It’s been a time for us to remember the contributions our mothers made, and sacrifices they endured, for us, their children. We’ve chosen this day to honour that and them, and to return some of the love they showered upon us all our lives.
Do you remember what you did about a week and a half ago to celebrate Mother’s Day? Well, as far as most people are concerned, my mother probably doesn’t.

So for this last Mum-mery of the season, I’d like to talk about memories. Specifically my mother’s. Some of you have written to or told me personally how nice it’s been to read these memories I have of my mother and so I thought it apt now instead to switch the focus around this time - to talk about my mother’s own memories instead.

Mum with some of her kids and grandkids

My mother has Parkinson’s and a form of dementia that is linked to it. Parkinson’s is a nervous system disorder that affects the motor system and diminishes the body’s ability to move. Dementia is a general term that refers to the mind’s reduced ability to collect, process, interpret and react to stimuli. Mum has both.

Few of her friends and family actually understand what she’s going through. For many, Mum’s inability to recognise them is a memory issue. “Oh she can’t remember me” or an intelligence issue - ‘second childhood’.

In layman’s language, the way Parkinson’s and Dementia work is simple. The body picks up stimuli - sight, sound, taste etc - and transmits these to the relevant part of the brain which processes them then sends a signal to another part of the brain so an appropriate response can be decided. When a response is decided, more signals then travel around so the relevant body parts can actually act out the required response. In a healthy person, all these signals get where they need to get with no problem. In a person with Parkinson’s or Dementia, the signals may simply never arrive where they need to be. And that’s all.

So in reality, Mum doesn’t have a Memory issue. When she sees you, the eyes pick up the stimuli but anywhere along the resulting journey, the signals that should elicit a ‘Hi, how are you?’ response get lost or scrambled. The visual stimuli may never tickle her sub-conscious mind to compare you to the database of faces she’s got stored in there. Or it may, but the resultant signal that transmits the ‘I know who this is’ message may never reach the the parts of the brain they need to get to. Or the signal arrives, but the response mechanism signal to make her smile and say ‘Hi” may not. And so on.

Rosemary helping Mum with Lo Hei during Chinese New Year

Mum with some of her grandchildren.

Does she recognise me, even on her ‘not-so-good days? I don’t know. She may, or she may not. That, however, is no reason to presume she does not. Or to treat her like a child.

Imagine that you could see and recognise people but somehow cannot react. You can’t get the words out, or respond with gestures or facial expressions even. How would you feel when people start talking to you, then get bored when you don’t respond and eventually turn away and talk to others instead? How would you feel if people started talking to you as if you were a child?

Understanding all this, I now interact with Mum a little differently than I did a year or so ago.

I speak with her almost like I would speak with anyone else. And because I just do not know at which point along the signal-journey our conversation ends, I now add little sign-posts too. This is something my sister Margaret, a nurse, taught me. I now reach out and touch my Mum more when I chat with her. I touch her hands or even pat her hair. One of the reasons is that even if my words don’t quite make it through, the touch may. So Mum knows we’re here and we care.

And isn’t that what Mother’s Day is really about?

Mum, we’re here and we care.

Mum-meries 6: Of Toys made from handkerchiefs

We are a family of 7 kids. My parents didn’t have high paying jobs and though we were never hungry or in great want, we also never had luxuries. Well, not many anyway.

I remember once, when I was in the midst of the chaos involved in ferrying 3 kids up to KL for the New Year or whatnot, talking with my Mum about travelling and holidays and family excursions. Struggling already with just the 3, I wondered aloud how she managed with the 7 of us when we went to the movies and so on. Her reply was short and simple ‘We never went out.’

I cast my mind back and realised she was right - I had not one recollection of us trooping off to the cinema or to some new attraction, much less a shopping mall. She explained that they just couldn’t afford to go out. They concentrated on the neccesities and though by the time I’d come along things were more settled, our holidays were simple affairs - Port Dickson with aunts, uncles and cousins who all shared a bungalow at the 3rd mile called Sandytide being an example - and if I was taken along to the movies, it would be with one of my brothers.

My Dad used to take the boys off to the East Coast during the school holidays and I remember those with affection too but there was only one time I travelled long distance with my mother.

I must have been just 3 or 4 years old and it’s one of my earliest memories now. My father had gone to Penang and I think it was for an Orchid show. For some reason Mum decided to take me there too by train. I have a brief recollection of an unpainted-steel train parked at night at what must have been the main station in KL. Mum and I shared the top bunk of the sleeper and I recall too looking out onto the corridor and seeing the rows of bunks. There was a group of young men travelling together just a little ways down and Irecall two of the men sitting on their lower bunks and talking across the aisle. One of their friends was on the upper bunk and I watched fascinated as he hopped across to the facing top bunk without descending to the floor.

My Mum pulled me back in and we drew the curtains though the conversational noise continued to come through.

Smetime later, I was still awake and Mum took out a handkerchief, then knotted it here and there and suddenly in her hands was a little doll, a toy man. We played with it for some time and though the intervening 45+ years has blurred the memories, I can still see her hands holding the arms of this toy man she’d made, manipulating them and I have a visual recollection of her mouth moving, making toy man noises, no doubt, though the sounds have been lost to the winds of time.

In Penang I recall seeing my Dad smiling, and I remember too staying at their friends’ house. Just little flashbacks - looking up from a mattress on the floor towards a woven rattan wall and the window above it, moonlight streaming in.

This was the only trip I, as a child, ever made with Mum and though this is a nothing-memory, an ethereal set of fleeting images and sounds, there is still something touching and heartwarming about it that I’ve treasured for years. At some subliminal level perhaps this is why I, until today, eschew tissues for handkerchiefs.