Remembering mom, even if she doesn't remember me

There's little chance my mother will recognize my voice on this Mother's Day, but that doesn't matter to me any more.

I've learned there is nothing fair or logical about Alzheimer's disease, and if you've gone through this with a family member, you've learned that, too.

My mother must have realized that long before she was diagnosed. When her husband, my father, died suddenly and she was left with eight children, one a baby and the rest in school, it must have occurred to her then.

When cancer took her daughter, my sister, it must have been clear. If not, it surely was when a heart attack took another child, my brother.

Those things devastated her. But I don't remember her ever acknowledging how unfair all of it was, no matter how often it was pointed out to her by others.

In fact, the thing I've retained from her more than anything else is just the opposite. It is her ability to be amazed by things others barely notice.

To me, it was just a feather on the lawn, just a painting, just a leaf turning red, just frost crystals on the window the same as the day before and the days before that.

But that these things and many more amazed her over and over was written on her face in an expression you would expect from someone who had just opened an Egyptian tomb and was gazing on the treasures for the first time.

Alzheimer's has taken away most of her memories, but it has not taken that away from her yet.

And that in itself amazes me, because her life has gotten no easier. When she was diagnosed, this strong, independent woman who'd pushed through so much grief and so many obstacles, faced the indignity of having her car keys taken away. And then, last year, the stroke. It was the last day she will ever spend in the house where she raised us. Mom was there through all the good - the celebrations and games and everyday laughter - and the bad, which included refereeing the bedlam between rebellious teens and, more than once, having a child dropped off by a police car.

After the stroke, she was in a nursing home for weeks until she could recover well enough to live with a caregiver. She begged over and over, through tears, to go home, knowing, I think, that she never will.

Last December, a week before Christmas, my sister and her husband died in a car crash. As we struggled through our own grief, we decided that we would not tell my mother. We were afraid of what it might do to her if she understood she had lost another child.

I believe, as advanced as the disease is, there are flashes of clarity when she does understand what it is doing to her and what she's lost.

But for all she's gone through, she has the family that she dedicated her life to raising. My sister, who gardens with her and dotes over her, and my brothers live close by. And her caregiver, who cares for her in a home that's like a zoo with dogs, birds and other amazing animals everywhere, loves her too.

It can never be what it was before, but those things mean there are still good days and even humor.

And Mother's Day still has meaning, though probably not to her in this last unknown amount of days before the disease pulls her all the way under. To me, Sunday won't be about noticing the little things she was so good at seeing ... I've gotten pretty good at appreciating those things every day.

It will be about her, and what she's done for me is no small thing.

• Barry Ginter is editor for the Nevada Appeal. Contact him at bginter@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1221.