Out of Control

That's what you call a jungle, isn't it?

Except that a few short years ago, it was mowed clean, with rows of nursery stock that never sold after my parents retired from the nursery business, the stock allowed to grow tall but always tidy. There wasn't a lot left, especially after townsfolk came to hear that Quay's Nursery was letting people come dig up what they wanted, for free. (In point of fact, I got a number of arborvitae for my house at that time. And a couple dogwood trees.)

But even though they went out of the diggin' business, my parents kept "The Meadow" mowed and neat and inviting, a lovely place for a walk down the hill to the creek. From where I took this picture, you could see all the long way to the end of the property easily. In 1999, I tested a pair of Mountain Horse snow boots by walking down to the meadow and standing on the snow in the shade of a holly tree to see if my feet would get cold. It was all open and lovely then. (No, my feet didn't get cold, not at all -- too bad I didn't have boots like that when I was a kid.)

The last time I was there, Mom and I walked all the way around the meadow and I listened to her talk about all the things she was doing to keep it neat. She had someone mowing with the big tractor for her, but she was still planting hand-raised Japanese maples for donations at her church's "yard sales." I can't remember what year that was, but she just about drove me nuts with her non-stop verbal battering (she would have called it "filling in the gaps in the conversation" because she always thought I was too quiet) and I didn't go back to visit in the flesh until a couple weeks ago.

Now sumac and locust trees have grown up there, and mimosas and silver maples, and poison ivy and nettles and raspberry brambles. Trash plants.

In a strange parallel, the meadow has become as clogged with weed trees and vines as her brain has become stifled and clogged with the Alzheimer's disease.

Today, though I am truly glad to be home, I woke startled to find myself in my own bed. And was immediately depressed. Is it because I know I'm going to have to go back there to find a place for her to live out the rest of her days? Or is it just a reaction to the lack of adrenaline in my system -- I'm not "full on" like I have been for the past month?

I sorted through the various papers and receipts I brought back, put them in folders and filed them away for future reference, and teetered on the brink of tears.

What can I say to my mother, who glimpses reality through a kaleidoscope of shifting images now? The disease has taken over and scrambled her time. It crumbles her knowledge of what is happening minute to minute while it surrounds her brain with cement, burying her, deeper and deeper. All the things that I saw on our road trip, the dust storms, the wild animals ... I find myself wanting to tell my mother about them, like I always did. But she's not there. The only thing present is the disease, which has assumed her form and mocked it with making her forget to eat enough, and which short circuits her words to loop around and around, moving her lips but blocking her ears so she doesn't understand what she hears.

When I was nine, she and Dad cleared the overgrown property they bought and called "The Meadow." They cut down the locust trees, eradicated the poison ivy and the honeysuckle tangles, and built terraced beds down the hill for azaleas, yews, rhododendron, and birch. It was a triumph for them, carving out order from the mess.

This time she has no way out of the jungle.