Today is a good day. I have spoken with my mother on the phone for five minutes, seven times in a row. We had seven identical conversations back to back. Mom is happy and I feel quite accomplished since I didn’t lose my cool.

“How’s your daughter?” she asked seven times today. Has my mother forgotten her grandchild’s name, I wonder? “She wants to marry a millionaire, right?” “No mom, she’s going to Uni in September.” Seven times. “Have you made new friends recently, dear?” “No mom, I haven’t.” Four times. “Yes mom, I have.” Three times, just to mix things up a bit. “When are you coming to visit?” And there we have it, the million-dollar question, the all-important one. This used to be the one question my mother asked only once each Sunday night. Every dementia info page will tell you that the elderly might repeat unimportant questions for a variety of reasons. Because they didn’t actively listen to your answer; because they don’t have much news of their own to share and want to keep the conversation going; because their hearing is not what it used to be. The day my mother started to repeat the all-important question over and over within one conversation, I knew we were in trouble. My mom has gone missing.

To me, my mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis is best compared with a window – a window on a long, windy afternoon. At first, the curtains blow in and out of place. One minute they block out the view from outside in, only to be back neatly on the sides the next, merely shielding the most private aspects of memory, the stuff nobody needs to know. As the wind picks up, the windowpanes start to rattle, they open and shut in the breeze, they do the unexpected at the most inopportune of moments. They slam close in your face when you want to suggest a harmless walk in the park while they open wide for the door-to-door salesman of a life insurance scam instead. Eventually the windows stay closed and the heavy shutters do the rattling, shutting you out, and your parent in, with the deafening sound of silence. Behind these shutters of her very own windy afternoon, my mom has gone missing.

Coffee can prevent Alzheimer’s, they say. Yeah right, I say. My mom has lived on coffee and cake ever since my father left. Dark chocolate can prevent Alzheimer’s, they say. Ditto, I say. Did I mention my mom’s diet of choice is chocolate cake? Crossword puzzles and mental exercises can counteract the disease. Does poem-writing count, I ponder? Mom is a published poet and playwright. Nothing that we know today can prevent this debilitating wind from starting to blow into your life. The wind has blown my mom away, she has gone missing.

My mother and I have much in common; we have always had something special to share. I have lived outside of my cultural home base for years and so has she. I write for a living, she is a poet. I teach French, my mother has enriched countless youngsters’ lives with a degree of understanding of the language they call ‘of love’. We are both dedicated mothers, we mastered family life in spite of absentee husbands, albeit for very different reasons. We appreciate the same movies, and we have read many of the same authors. We love traveling, and chocolate, and dogs; and we can’t stand bigotry. But the scope of our conversations is getting very narrow these days, as my mom has gone missing from our common interests.

My mother would not like the new stand-in who pretends to be her today. This new lady won’t read a book; she can’t follow the story line. She won’t go to church; she doesn’t know it’s Sunday. She skips meals; she doesn’t know she’s hungry. She mistrusts everybody; she doesn’t know we want to help. She rejects all help; she doesn’t know she’s ill. And right there might well be the silver lining. This lady doesn’t know she needs help, she doesn’t know that my mom has gone missing.

I no longer search for my mother. I know I won’t find her. Instead I find patience, generosity, understanding, acceptance and a will to go the extra mile from strangers everywhere we go. From the waitress at the coffee shop where my mother spills her drink, from sales clerks at the drugstore where she leaves without paying, from the bus driver who catches my mother riding without a ticket. I’m grateful, for I have found compassion where I least expected it. I have found faith in humanity where my mom has gone missing.

Fanny Bucheli is an FMT columnist.

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