When I Get Old, What Do I Become?

A Daughter's Loving Response..."You become a person who is loved even more."

I am sitting with my 86-year-old mother in her sunny room on Alzheimer's Row, with her most recent question still hanging in the air: "When I get old, what do I become?"

Gazing at my mother, brittle and slightly curled up in her wheelchair like a fallen leaf, I am speechless. Her eyes wear an expression of perpetual surprise, and her mouth forms an "O" of wonderment. And I think, "How can someone who can't remember how to use a fork ask such a deep question?" Even more surprising was that my mother, who had once crossed the Atlantic during World War II in a troop ship surrounded by destroyers and submarines–and yet who feared getting old more than anything else in the world–could never have vocalized such a question when she was younger.

She truly has me stumped. Searching for an answer, I reflect on society's temptation to view elderly dementia patients as having reached the end of their usefulness, as having lost their humanity. What exactly DO we become when we get old? Perhaps being thought of in this way is what my mother feared.

A basic aspect of humanity is our ability to give to others. Does my mother have opportunities to give? I remember working with her recently to write a get-well note to her husband John, laid up at home with a bad back. He was so grateful to receive her note and she was overjoyed at his written response. I think about the smiles she brings to the nurses' faces when she sings a song or wears a funny hat. Many dementia patients in her ward can only babble, and yet when I accept their out-stretched hands, I carry on a conversation with them, however one-sided it might seem to passers-by. From these and other experiences, I conclude that humanity in my mother is alive and well, and that she is very useful to her family and friends in her residence. In fact humanity appeared to be more alive among her fellow inmates on Alzheimer's Row than in many places in the world.

My mother for once is not forgetting her question, and I have to answer. So I say, "When you are old, you are the same, only different. You may look and sound different, and perhaps you can't remember much or do the things you used to do, but you still affect people in positive ways. Even though you are now old, you are still my mother, and although you are different, I like the things you do. I love your hugs and butterfly kisses, and you make me smile. You make the people around you happy. And no matter what, when you get old, you become a person who is loved even more."

She nods, graces me with a beautiful smile, and seems satisfied with the answer. I hope I can be satisfied with it when I am 86.

"You become a person who is loved even more."

Laura Bramly is a communications consultant and the author of ElderCareRead books, cognitive activities for people with moderate to advanced dementia. She lives in Gilbert, AZ. Her mother passed away from vascular dementia in June 2008. Bramly may be reached at or www.eldercareread.com.