Looks Like We Hit the Love Jackpot

My mother has been talking about sexual intimacy…a lot. I spoke with her geriatric nurse practitioner about it and apparently this is another symptom of Alzheimer’s Disease; either sexual desire will decrease due to depression, or the changes in the brain increase the need for intimacy and physicality.* In my mother’s case, it looks like we hit the love jackpot.

We knew something wasn’t quite right when she started talking about her physical relationship with my father (what every daughter longs to hear), who passed away thirty-three years ago. I usually shield my ears from her saucy conversation and run from the room, a sour expression plastered on my face.

But then the discussion will manifest into current desire - feeling lonely and needing and wanting a man to share her life with now. She’ll often speak of old loves, most frequently a man she dated before she married my father. She has never forgotten him, pre- or post- dementia.

“He was so handsome,” her voice lowered to an awed hush. “His name was Norman Miller and he was the foreman in the sewing factory where I worked.

“He’d leave me a piece of candy in my drawer every day, and my sister Connie would be mad because she liked him too.

“I would see him on Friday nights and your father on Saturday nights.”

“What?” I responded. “What did Daddy think of that?”

“He didn’t know,” hint of a tiny smile on her face.

“One Friday night Norman took me back to the factory…

Oh no…here it comes…

“and in the office was a large couch…

la la la…I can’t hear you…

“I tell you, only by the grace of God did we have the strength to stop…

Can we have a little of that grace now to stop this conversation?…

“Otherwise…otherwise…

“What Jill?” I didn’t know Dan had been listening. “Would it have been Miller Time?”

What I find truly tragic, probably among the most tragic of the disease for her to date, is that now, when the need has finally re-awakened, it is from that part of her brain that is afflicted. And I don’t know how to help her when I find her in the kitchen at night searching through the phone book for Norman or for other childhood loves, and sometimes, even for my father.

*Alzheimer Care - Intimacy and Sexuality - http://www.alzheimer.ca/english/care/ethics-intimacy.htm