Don't let the bedbugs bite: Or, what not to say to someone who has Alzheimer's

Are those my blue slippers?

Yes mom, those are your blue slippers.

She asks me the same question nearly every morning since she got the slippers this past Christmas.

Those are nice slippers, she says as I help her get dressed for the day.

And they are. I went online to find a perfect pair of spa slippers in her favorite color with a snug Velcro closure and rubber soles to prevent slipping.

By the time she is dressed her attention goes back to the same pair of slippers.

Are they yours?

No mom, those are your slippers.

Those are nice slippers.

It is as routine as the rest of the day for mom and me right down to the last words we share as I tuck her into bed.

Good night mom, I tell her as I flip the switch darkening her room, and then the next one that leaves only the nightlight a glow in the hall. As I walk away she says, Good night… pauses… sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!

She recites the rhyme nearly every night like I am still the little girl who was certain that hairy monsters lived under my bed, the kind that would grab me by the ankles and yank me into the terrifying bedbug underworld if my legs dangled below the bed springs after the lights were out.

I used to give mom a kiss on the forehead and say, Good night, love you.

Until one night half way down the hall I heard her talking to herself. I stopped to listen anonymously.

She kissed me on the forehead… pause … said she loved me… pause again… who was that?

There was a period in her cognitive decline when my mother would know enough to be devastated by that missing critical detail – my name. But that night she blurted the question into an empty room of purple shadows genuinely seeking clarity.

A few days later mom was watching television while I sat across from her on the sectional. It was around the time she typically would go to bed. She had nodded off for a bit and was startled awake by the cat climbing onto her lap. She looked at me and asked, Is there anyone here who can give me a ride home?

On the heels of the bedtime bewilderment over who was kissing her goodnight and who loved her, the question was a disturbing signal of her further decline. It caused me to do something that annoys me to no end when other people do it.

It still ceases to amaze me how often old friends and relatives she hasn’t seen in a while move in on her in an uncomfortably close way, especially when you consider they are for all intent and purposes in mom’s world strangers, and say, Do you know who I am?

Or even worse, Oh Shirley you remember me from the bridge club right? Frank’s wife? So I am. . .? Like it’s a Jeopardy question.

To spare mom’s dignity I jump in with the answer when I know it. When I don’t the old friend is stuck having to remind her and mom pretends to give a shit. I actually love watching her finesse those moments.

Asking, Do you know who I am? should top the list of questions never to ask a person suffering from Alzheimer’s or any kind of dementia. That is unless you are the primary caregiver, the one who has lived with the person since they were diagnosed nearly a decade earlier, and the one who has been the person’s daughter for 55 years. That person has a special right to know how far her mother has drifted from reality.

So on that night, as mom was asking me to call her a cab to go home when the bedroom she had been sleeping in for the last six years was ten feet away, I needed to know.

After getting her into her nightclothes I sat her on the edge of her bed and asked the forbidden question.

Do you know who I am?

Ha! She was indignant and asked the question right back to me.

Do you know who I am?!

She may have forgotten a great many things but not her stubbornly defensive nature. I could see the wheels turning. She knew she should know the answer but was stalling for time.

Well, I responded, I am pretty sure that I am your daughter. So now can you tell me who I am?

Grinning she looked up at me and said, Well… I am pretty sure that you are I.

True on so many levels it was a winning answer if I ever heard one.

I tucked her in, kissed her goodnight, and told her I loved her.