Time continues to flow forward, and we follow suit. Only the mother, who seemed to be left where she was, was constantly reversing time on her, turning her into a twelve-year-old child who remembered nothing.
1
At three o'clock in the middle of the night, my mother was clamoring to go out, and my father whispered to persuade her. Through the door, I couldn't hear clearly.
There was a crisp sound, the metal object hit the ground, and the mother began to cry.
Ten minutes later, my father helped my mother change her diaper, put on her clothes and go out, the key was moved from the hook at the door to the trouser pocket, and the creaking sound of the door was like a stretched sigh.
My father is old and has completed his retirement service, but he refuses to leave his job for a long time, and he is afraid that his grandmother will not come to help him after retirement, so he can only take care of his mother independently.
In fact, my grandmother recently mentioned many times that "rheumatism is not good for my legs and feet" and "I am too old to help you for too long", and my father did not understand the meaning behind these words. But my grandmother has long since passed away, and my grandfather is 91 years old in his hometown. After my grandfather learned about his mother, he set up a statue of Guanyin in the living room of his hometown, which he had spent 5,000 begging, and prayed for Guanyin to bless his mother's illness and hang it with another statue of his Bodhisattva who asked for longevity.
Because there is no one to help at home, I have also hired a nanny to take care of my mother, in a fifth-tier city, the monthly salary is 5,000 bags of food and housing, but my mother has a strange temper and is troublesome, and the nanny is still not good after changing three or four.
At half past four o'clock in the middle of the night, the sound of the key opening the door sounded in the quiet night, I poked my head out of the door, the room was dark, only the entrance light was on in the house, my mother sat on the shoe changing chair at the end of the entrance, without saying a word at the ceiling, my father slowly squatted down, took off and changed shoes for my mother, the living room light turned on and off, and the door was closed.
Twenty minutes later, the door rang again, the living room sofa sank, the lighter "snapped", and I opened the crack in the peeping door and stepped into the living room.
"Excuse me, I've woken you up." The living room was not lit, and my father's face was reflected like a piece of red-hot iron by cigarette butts, and he was diagnosed with ground-glass nodules in his lungs a year ago, suspected of lung cancer, but he had not yet gone for a biopsy. Smoking quit and picked it up, how many nights no one knows how many nights he relied on to support, smoke may kill him, but it is important to get through the moment.
"Oh, I want to send your mother to a nursing home...... Mi'er, it's not the old man (Sichuan dialect: Dad) who is ruthless, your mother's life is now in exchange for the old man's life. My father's words ended with a crying voice, and this time my father suddenly asked me to take four days off to come back to discuss this matter.
And I didn't expect that in just three years, the mother completely became a "child", and the shadow of Alzheimer's disease spread from one person to the whole family.
2
It all started quietly. After graduating from university three years ago, I chose to stay in the city where the university is located to work, returning to my hometown twice a year, and maintaining video contact with my parents once every two days on weekdays.
Twice I called my mother's WeChat video was not answered, after the father came back to me, a question said that my mother was in the kitchen, I vaguely noticed that something was wrong, kept an eye on it, the next day again, after repeated questioning, my father had to admit - my mother went to the garbage bank to take out the garbage when she broke her foot, and now in the hospital, three steel nails were hit in the ankle.
"Oh, it's okay, just be discharged from the hospital." Mother said on the other end of the video.
But I didn't expect that this was just the beginning of the nightmare.
After I was discharged from the hospital, it was my father who inadvertently mentioned to me in the video that my mother almost caused an accident: it turned out that my mother forgot to stew duck soup in the kitchen and went out, but fortunately, my father smelled mush at home, and immediately turned over and got up and turned off the kitchen gas stove. When my father said this, he didn't forget to joke with my mother: "It's my feet, why don't my heads be clear?" The mother tilted her head sideways, her lips pursed into a line, and a look of shame on her face.
My mother's job was selling bulk liquor in the wet market, in the community that my father managed. Although my father has a unit meal, my parents, who have always had a good relationship, are still willing to have lunch and dinner together, and this habit has been maintained for as long as I can remember. My mother has been cooking all her life, but there have been frequent cases of missing hands recently.
Some dishes forget to put salt.
Some dishes are put with vinegar twice.
Another time, my father called my mother in the morning and asked my comrades to come and cook more food, but when I brought my friends to the store, my mother completely forgot about these things.
The above can be explained by "old and forgetful", until one day, a big local supermarket suddenly called my father, and they told him that his mother had stolen a plate of yogurt.
Although the father was surprised, he didn't care, and explained to the family in a good voice that it must have been a misunderstanding, and asked the mother to make up the money, but the other party said that the mother had not paid for the third time......
In the surveillance video, the mother put the yogurt into her own environmental protection bag, and then went straight out of the no shopping channel, the evidence is ironclad, the father apologized with a shy face, paid the fine, and did not say a word along the way.
When he returned home, his father suddenly became angry and asked his mother why he had done such a thing, and his mother whispered, "I really don't remember." ”
After a week of running-in, my mother agreed to go to the hospital with my father, and after a neurological examination in a local tertiary hospital, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
3
When my mother learned the news, she became silent, and all the medicines prescribed by the doctor were locked in the medicine box. Because of the small size of the place, the news of my mother's theft spread all over the vegetable market the next day, and even my father was accused of "this policeman's wife stealing things".
After thinking about it for a few days, my mother quickly stopped doing loose liquor business for 21 years – fearing that she would not be able to guarantee food safety.
In fact, the second elder also thought about explaining the truth of "stealing" to others, but when he thought of admitting that he had Alzheimer's disease, his mother, who wanted to save face all his life, couldn't pull down his face.
During that time, my mother always did my father's favorite food, cleaned up all the housework, silently apologized to my father, and also filled the void of lost jobs.
The atmosphere at home was calm and eerie.
When I learned of my mother's memory loss, I discussed with my father that I should simply go back to my hometown and find a job to accompany my mother, but my parents sternly refused: "You can just take care of yourself." ”
In the next two months, although my mother still forgot things, such as putting socks in the refrigerator and putting half of the dishes in the sink, she did not do anything that was too worrying. My father and I thought that the hospital would only diagnose the most serious cases, and that my mother's condition might not be so bad, as long as we kept our mood happy and exercised seriously.
After checking the information on the Internet, I learned that having a pet is helpful to my mother's condition, and I deliberately took my mother to the pet store when I went home during the May Day holiday, and half-coaxed and half-threatened to buy a small black teddy for my mother, named "Niu Niu", which was my nickname when I was a child, and also let my mother use the puppy as my stand-in to accompany her.
A week after Niuniu entered the house, my mother called me every day to complain, saying that Niuniu was troublesome and uneasy, and asked to leave. Although the mother occasionally gets stuck in her speech, she is more expressive than when she is not raising a girl. I saw the dawn and insisted that she raise her for half a year, and when I settled down, I would pick up Niuniu to accompany me, and my mother agreed to raise her.
Half a month later, because of walking the dog, my mother had to go out of the house, and I also met a group of new dog friends, and I loved to laugh even more. Except for the occasional walk that takes too long, and her father needs to call her to urge her to come home, there is nothing else out of the ordinary.
On June 20th, my mother lost Niuniu.
That day, my mother went to visit my grandmother, the two families were close, and there was a shared electric car in Sichuan, and it only took 20 minutes to ride it. At nine o'clock in the morning, my mother went downstairs and rode her bicycle to put Niuniu in the front basket of the car. When I was about to get to my grandmother's house, I suddenly saw an old man selling peaches on the side of the street, which was my grandmother's favorite fruit, and my mother immediately got out of the car to buy them.
After buying it, she thought that it was only 5 minutes away from her grandmother's house, and she didn't need to spend 2 yuan to ride a bike, so she left directly. That day, my mother stayed at my grandmother's house from morning to evening, and it wasn't until I got home that I needed to ride a bicycle that I remembered that I had taken Niuniu out of the house today.
We didn't find a dog near my grandmother's house, and we posted a notice to find the dog.
I offered to buy my mother another dog, but my mother refused.
When my father and I were still worried about my mother blaming herself for Niuniu's affairs, my mother had forgotten that Niuniu existed, and she still used to call "Niuniu, Niuniu" at home, but the next sentence was "You hurry up and have breakfast, and you have to go to class in the evening". Occasionally, such illogical sentences would pop out of my mother's mouth, and my father would tell me worriedly, "Your mother seems to be mentally ill." ”
Since the loss of Niuniu, her mother rarely goes out alone. Her father was also afraid that she would have an accident, so he moved his mind to send his mother to a nearby nursing home during the day.
The mother cried and refused, scolding the father, and when the grandmother learned about it, she didn't agree - her daughter was only 49 years old, how could she enter that kind of place. My grandmother took care of my mother during the day, and my father gave my grandmother 5,000 yuan a month as living expenses, and told my grandmother what her mother was suitable to eat in normal times, and she should take her out to communicate with others more often, which would help her condition.
After all, my grandmother was old, and she was out of breath when she walked a short distance with her mother during the day, but in order to make her mother happy, she still insisted on accompanying her mother to do what she loved to do - visiting clothing stores and talking to the clerks.
During this period, there was an incident where my mother put on her clothes and left the store.
There were also cases where my mother suddenly pointed across the road and called my name, telling my grandmother that she saw me on the other side of the street - I was working at my workstation thousands of miles away, working in front of the computer.
My grandmother told my father that she was powerless, so my father could only prescribe diazepam from the doctor and give it to my grandmother, saying, "It's really not good to let her sleep during the day, I'll come back at night to accompany her." ”
The burden on my grandmother's shoulders was lighter, but the weight that was reduced was all on my father's shoulders.
4
My father hired five nannies, the longest stayed for 21 days, and the shortest stayed for only 1 day and left.
Not only does my mother hallucinate, she is also very insecure. As long as the nanny accompanies her, she will sue her father The nanny pinched her and beat her, and did not give her food, even if her father had installed surveillance at home, and the monitoring content was normal. But considering that there are also blind spots in the monitoring, and his mother has been crying, his father can't bear it, and he and his grandmother have to take care of his mother in person, so he can rest assured.
But every time he made a video call with his father, he said: "Don't worry, your mother is very good, just like a child." You go to work with peace of mind. "Cover it up. All along, I knew that my father must be hard, but I didn't expect him to work so hard.
During the epidemic, I was able to spend time with my mother at home, witnessing the life of my father and mother, and also witnessing my mother leaving me little by little.
In order to facilitate the father's care, the mother lived as an owl, or like a child who had fallen asleep, well-behaved by day and a devil by night.
As long as the mother is awake, the family must tense their nerves.
Compared to the loving clean and gentle mother I remember, the person in front of me is scruffy and hysterical.
My mother's first incontinence was on the morning of the second day of the Lunar New Year, when I rolled a pot of quick-frozen dumplings and told my father to get up and eat them. Rarely, my mother also said that she wanted to eat, and I was quite happy.
Taking the bowl and dividing it, the mother lowered her head and took small bites, and the juice got on her hands and face, like a little cat. I secretly exchanged glances with my father, and my mother looks pretty good today.
Suddenly, there was a "shhh
"Mom, why don't you go to the bathroom?" I asked cautiously.
"I urinated suddenly, and I didn't feel it."
This happened four or five times in a week. As if resigned to her fate, my mother viciously watched her father put on adult diapers for her, and I comforted my mother that I also used the same thing during my menstrual period, and showed her physiological pants to make her emotionally stable.
Due to the epidemic, my mother could not go to the hospital for a follow-up, so we had to call my mother's attending doctor, but the doctor's feedback was frustrating.
At home, my mother would sometimes mutter, "pee, pee", but she went to the bedroom, opened the bottom drawer of the dresser and urinated inside, and the old photos were soaked in water.
The toilet door at home is comically pasted with several pieces of white paper with the words "toilet" written in red pen and drawn in the shape of a toilet. The mother's and father's bedroom doors were similarly labeled with "sleep" notes and the bed was drawn.
But my father and I were so scared that one day, my mother would forget the words and pictures on the paper, and eventually even our figures disappeared from her world.
After the pandemic, before I left home, my mother had completely degenerated into a child, and sometimes she couldn't even tell the difference between me and my father. Sometimes I become her junior high school classmate Lu Yan, and sometimes I become an aunt. My mother would sometimes ask me to go shopping for flowers and TV drama pictures together, and she would suddenly make a big noise and complain to my father, tearfully saying that I beat her and bit her.
I almost fled back to work, because the feeling of suffocation near me was crushing by my mother's side. I understood that my mother and I had to carry the rest of my mother's life with me, but I slyly thought: a little later, a little later.
5
Later, one day, my grandmother accompanied my mother for a walk outside, and my mother suddenly ran forward, and my grandmother chased after her and threw herself on the ground, and her knees were all bruised.
After several comparisons, I took my mother to a local nursing home with a good rating.
As soon as I saw my mother, the reception staff at the nursing home said that my mother had a good personality. But my mother didn't hear our conversation at all, just looked around with her eyes wide open, not crying or making a fuss.
There is a test for nursing home admissions.
The nursing worker, wearing a uniform with the name of the nursing home printed on it, half-squatted down, carefully covered the back of his mother's hand with his palm, and asked, "How old are you?" ”
Her mother smiled at her, "Auntie, I'm 12 years old. ”
Then the nurse pointed to me and asked my mother, "Who is she?" ”
My mother looked at me, frowned, and suddenly said, "Baby." ”
My vision blurred, and I shouted in my heart: 12-year-old mother, you have to live a little longer, until the day when my father and I can't bear it.
When I returned to work, I asked my boss to leave the company.
On July 1st, I returned to my parents.
Title Picture | Image from "Spring Tide"
Picture | The pictures in the article are all from the Internet
(Text/Gray, this article is the exclusive first release of "Human Story Shop", enjoys exclusive copyright authorization, and no third party may reprint it without authorization, and violators will be held accountable according to law.) ）