Very touching. I am please for you and your mom that she is a "happy" Alzheimer's patient. And what a testament to humor! Lovely.

Dear Margaret T,
Thanks for reading and commenting. Yes, we feel fortunate that she is for the most part happy and enjoying life. There is something to be said for "living in the moment". And, despite memory issues, humor is a wonderful way to connect with her.

Heart-breaking and heart-warming at the same time.

Dear ds,
Thank you for the perceptive comment!

Beautiful, Sally. Thank you!!!!

Thanks PR!

Once again you have prove the benefits of humor! Thanks for sharing.

Correction to last comment: proof instead of prove

Thanks, Maria, for reading and commenting! Laughter is the best medicine!

You're amazing, Sally. Every one of your pieces is a delight to read.

Dear wonderful,
Thank you for your kind words!

Being in the moment allows us all to laugh sometimes. Fun piece, Sally, that also had me pondering. Thank you. (I tried to comment earlier, but I must not have done something right. Forgot how perhaps?!)

Thanks, LJ, for reading and commenting!

Sally, your post brought me tears. I don't think we realize how much our mothers sacrificed until we become mothers ourselves.

Your post also brought memories of my grandmother (years ago) in the later stages of dementia, who asked my brother how much she owed him for mowing the lawn because she thought he was the gardener. Alzheimers and dementia are so hard to watch. It's really heartbreaking.

I'm sure your mom knows how much you appreciate her. It's so wonderful that you are able to visit her regularly. I hope the two of you are able to share many more laughs along the way.

Thanks, Erin, for sharing a few tears with me!

You are a good daughter...and mother...and wife and community member. Thank you for sharing this personal piece. It helps the rest of us cope who feel like they are not doing things perfectly enough either.

Hi GC,
Being a mom and being perfect are mutually exclusive, so let's just enjoy the ride.

One evening, my husband and I arrived at the local assisted living home where my mother-in-law, with Alzheimer, had been living since it was no longer feasible for her to live at home with my father-in-law. She remembered me as a "friend" about whom she had warm feelings, but could she could no longer remember how she and I were connected. So, she greeted me warmly, as she always did, and introduced me to her son (my husband). We played along, shaking hands and saying hello to one another. Then, I leaned over to me mother-in-law and whispered, "I'm married to him." Without missing a beat, she replied, "My, you work fast!" Though she could no longer remember many things; she retained a wicked sense of humor! We simultaneously mourned the parts of her that were lost, and enjoyed the parts that remained sharp as a tack! Humor always seems to help.

Thanks, Sue. I love that story! That is so much like my mom. I know we are lucky that despite their illness we can still laugh with them.

Pleased to see this still open for discussion.

Taking this one step further, I am interested in how Sally and others find explaining to young children what is happening to their grandparents. Explaining that adult children of elderly parents have to start to reverse the roles can be hard for young children to understand. Many grandparents are still vital members of the family, taking their grandchildren on fun trips, doing babysitting and busy with exciting lives of their own. Other grandparents are frail and need more and more help from the younger members of the family. How do you deal with the "it's not fair" when comparisons are made with their friends or the "when are we going to have to do that for you?" comments which inevitably come up.

I find that my kids at times are very understanding until it actually affects them. They see grandparents and even great grandparents getting older and they accept it reasonably well. But when they see friends doing fun things with their grandparents it does make them ask the inevitable questions and these questions seem to be much harder than some of the other questions they ask about comparisons with other families. They seem to accept comparisons on financial levels or family values much better than elderly grandparent comparisons.

Hi Mother of 4,
Thanks for reading and commenting.
My kids are more accepting of my parents' decline and deal with it better than I do, as this is how they have always known them. If kids are having a hard time with it, though, or feeling envious of friends with healthy, fun, grandparents, it is probably for the same reasons that I am having a hard time, which is grief. I think acknowledging the grief, sadness, and loss we feel when loved ones are aging and ill can go a long way to helping us deal with the other emotions that creep in (envy, resentment, jealousy, anger..)

I'm pretty sure my kids are taking mental notes of some of the difficulties we've had getting ailing parents to stop driving and accept caregivers in the home. I am certain we will hear about it from the kids if we are equally uncooperative with these issues as we age!