ConfessionsMaroonOyster

17 Sept 2 min read

She Calls Me a Stranger Every Morning. I'm Her Daughter.

I have been taking care of my mother for five years now. Since the Alzheimer's took hold, she doesn't remember much, but she remembers one thing every single morning she thinks I am hired help. "You're so kind," she tells me, holding my hand like I'm a stranger doing her a favour. "My daughter would never take care of me like this. That girl, she has forgotten where she came from." I smile and nod. "It's nothing, ma. I'm happy to help." Then I go inside, close the bathroom door, turn on the tap so the sound covers me, and I cry. Nobody warns you about this kind of pain. People prepare you for the diapers, the wandering at night, the repeated questions. Nobody prepares you for your own mother looking straight into your face and not seeing her daughter — seeing instead a "kind stranger" who is somehow better than the child she raised. Every morning, I bathe her. I cook her food the way she taught me, sometimes reminding myself of her own recipes because now she can no longer tell me. I take her to her hospital appointments, I pay from my small salary when the money from my siblings delays, I sit with her when the night confuses her and she calls out for people who died twenty years ago. And every morning, she thanks the "helper" and insults her own daughter in the same breath. My siblings abroad send transfers and call once in a while to ask, "How is Mummy?" They do not know I am the "wicked daughter" she complains about to me, without knowing it is me. Some days I want to shout, "Mummy, it's me! I'm the one!" But what good would it do? She would only be confused, or worse, hurt all over again, as if for the first time. So I keep swallowing it. I keep showing up. I keep being the daughter she thinks doesn't exist, because somewhere underneath the disease, I believe she still knows kindness when she receives it — even if she no longer knows whose hands are giving it. This is what nobody tells you about caring for a parent with Alzheimer's in this life: sometimes love means being erased from someone's memory while you're still standing right in front of them, wiping their tears, and swallowing your own.