Escaping from the blues
Last night I went to bed exhausted and this morning I woke up still tired. You’d think I spent the day running yesterday when in fact I spent it sitting at my computer playing Free Cell. But I woke up early because my cell phone signaled a text message. “My mother has Alzheimer, too. I take care of her so I share your agony. Sometimes she doesn’t want to sleep and stays up all night. And she is always angry. Is anger part of the disease?”
Is anger part of the disease? That’s an excellent question, I thought. Of course, I realized, it was always part of the disease. I thought of my mother being so unreasonably angry with me at the start. That anger stayed for many years. There was only one time when it seemed to have disappeared, when I visited her in Vancouver in 1999. But it returned after that, never went away, got progressively worse.
I thought about her housemates in Noli Center, other Alzheimer patients, they were all angry. Two of them are constantly squabbling. One of them is there because his children gave up. He kept chasing their maids with a knife threatening to kill them. One of them isolates herself, only gets out of her room to go to the bathroom.
But the other strange thing is that when you put them in an Alzheimer home, like Noli Center, where they are in the care of total strangers, their anger sort of cools down. They appear to be more peaceful among people they don’t know than they are with people they love. My mother used to torment me. Her cheeks would turn to marble when I kissed her. Yes, anger is always a part of Alzheimer’s disease, or most of the cases I have seen anyway. Thank you for pointing that out.
I have spent the day thinking. Yes, and what bothers me most about my mother’s illness is my fear of her anger visible in the way she looks at me. Her eyes fill with spite, with palpable hate. I brace myself before approaching her. Now she closes her eyes when she sees me, grimacing, her eyes tightly shut and she never opens them for so long as she senses I am there. It seems she does not want to see me ever again. She fills me with fear, makes me want to escape, to run away far, to die somewhere, to drown and never return. Save me from this please, I pray. I know there is nothing more I can do. I know this is not her fault either. But please save us both from this.
I teach, you know. I have a batch of students who are professionals. I’ve taught them to write. I suspect a few of them are artists at heart but I am definitely certain of one. He is tall, dark, handsome and he is only 22. We were reviewing for impending final exams. I asked them to write about the sea.
He wrote:
Take my hand and come with me
Just relax and drift freely
On this warm and big blue sea.
Take my hand and come with me
Let’s walk on the shore and there you’ll see
How big the moon is, the stars in the galaxy.
Take my hand and come with me
Let the sound of the waves give you tranquility
Enjoy the warmth of the sun and dance — with energy.
Take my hand and come with me
Just lie on the sand and let it be
Forget the worries, the misery
Let if flow. Be carefree.
So now, take my hand and walk with me.
A simple, lovely poem that sounded like it was meant for me but, of course, it was not. It’s just what flowed out of him when I asked the class to write about the sea.
That poem was written by Brian Bigueja, who wants to travel through the world taking beautiful, expressive photographs. I just know he will make it, that one day long after I am dead, he will have a show and maybe on opening night he will drink a toast to me naming me as one of the early people who prodded him into pursuing his dream. I just know in my bones this will happen.
I guess my classes help save my sanity. They distract me from the problems I am helpless to solve. My students make me laugh or drive me up the wall but they are different from my mundane details and these days bring me a lot of joy. I need the distraction badly.
I must apologize to some people to whom I said the talk on Alzheimer was over. No, it was a sign of my early Alzheimer’s. I’m the one whose dates were scrambled. The talk is tomorrow at SMX, beside the Mall of Asia. I think you must pay P200 to get in. I will not be there. My students and I are going out to lunch and having fun. Anything to get away from the blues.
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