MY MOTHER-IN-LAW and her battle with Alzheimers

                 

 I remember ...

It was on one of our visit in her home in Angela Village.

I was reading a magazine in their garden patio when Mommy came over and sat beside me.

 I put down my magazine and waited for her to say something; she didn’t say anything, I didn’t say anything either. We just sat and look at the flowers in her garden.

After a long while she said, “I’m sad ... I don’t know why.”

Tio Maning died just a few months ago so I understood, or I thought I did.

“Do you want us to go to the mall?” the mall is just about 5 blocks away from their house.

“No, I don’t need anything ...that’s what makes it more difficult. I have everything that I want, I could eat all the foods I wanted to eat, but I am still unhappy,” she said, depression in her voice. “Now I understand why some people end their life,” she continued.

“Maybe you just miss Tio Maning,” I said.

No answer. To distract her from whatever lonely thoughts she had, I talked about my children’s performances in school. This usually makes her happy ... but not this time.

I am not sure if she was listening because she didn’t say anything. Her gaze was afar, her mind wandering. After a while she stood up and went to the stereo cabinet.

“I miss this man,” she pointed to the picture of Tio Maning prominently displayed atop the cabinet.

She forgot Tio Maning’s name again. Mr Alzheimer’s visits are getting frequent.

I felt sad. I am slowly losing a dear friend to the visitor.

Yes, Mommy is not just a mother- in- law, she was a friend.

 I remember ...

It was during our 1981 Christmas reunion in Monumento.

I was sitting in my favourite corner in the veranda, looking at my children playing when mommy came and sat beside me.

“You can get over it ... the loneliness,” she said.
I could not look at her nor answer so I just nodded. Then she patted my shoulder and went back to her kitchen. Only then did I allow my tears to fall.

My husband Ben, left for Saudi Arabia November 1981, barely a month to that day.

Nothing much was said but a mountain of understanding was created. One simple sentence and a pat on the shoulder told me she understood.

Yes, Mommy knows how I feel; Mommy understood loneliness.

                                                        -   Mommy's loves  -








My father-in-law, Bienvenido Rosal Zaldivar, was a Captain of the Philippine Constabulary.


I remember her stories about their stay in La Union, about how she decorated their drab quarters with curtains, about their duty free shopping, about their city walks in Baguio...Mommy must have loved being with her man on these missions.

However, when the children came, many times she has to be left behind with her relatives in Caloocan. In one of those times, the one she must have dreaded the most, happened.

Ben, my husband, said the only scene he recalled of that time was seeing Tia Feling holding a pitcher of water while comforting Mommy. Mommy was leaning on the wall with her hands on the dining table and she was crying.

Ben was just 3 yrs old then, he remembered nothing more,

Maybe it was better that way because his Mom had just  received the news that her 32 yrs old husband was killed in an ambushed in Barrio Buboy, Nagcarlan, Laguna. The ambushed was staged by the HUKs, a rebel group, remnant of the former guerrillas fighting against the Japanese.

Yes mommy understood loneliness. She suffered not only the loneliness of separation but also the almost unbearable pain of losing a husband.


Mommy became a widow at the very young age of 30.








                                              


Because her husband died in line of duty, and because she was well qualified to work in an office, a friend of her husband who is also in the military, offered Mommy a position in Camp Aguinaldo's computer department.

Left with four little children to feed, Mommy was left with no option; she accepted the job and sought the help of her siblings for the care of her four children.

Typical of many Filipino families then, Mommy’s siblings helped her reconstruct her life;
Edna and Ben at the back, Linda and Eddie in front 


Tia Feling and Tio Ciano took care of 5 yrs. old Edna, Tio Itong and Tia Sioning took care of 2 yrs. old Eddie, and Mama Rita, another aunt, took care of the youngest, 9 months old Linda.

Mommy, now left with just one child, Ben, to take care of, slowly recovered.

She also found another love.



                                           
Seven years after the death of her husband and while working as a panel board wire programmer in Camp Aguinaldo, Mommy met Manuel Brazal an intelligent bachelor from Burgos, Pangasinan. Tio Maning works in the computer department of Camp Aguinaldo too.

From this union, they begot three beautiful daughters, Winnie, Agnes, and Jannel.

Jannel
Agnes on the left and Winnie on the right



















Tio Maning was a good husband; he took care of Mommy well, especially when Mommy could not tend to herself anymore and even when he himself, was already sick with prostate cancer.

When Mommy starts to forget things, it was Tio Maning who makes sure she gets her medicines on time; makes sure she has eaten; makes sure her clothes are clean.

Perhaps it was also the reason why,  though she has forgotten his name, she hasn't  really forgotten him.
                               
                                               Mommy's early Life ...

Mommy graduated salutatorian in High school and earned her teaching degree at the National University.

Ben said Mommy must have gotten her brains from her father, Miguel Malapitan, son of Sebastian Malapitan of Pampanga. He was known in the Caloocan neighbourhood (where Mommy grew up),  as a mathematician.

Mommy's life after her graduation from college is quite hazy. Nobody from the children knows except that she did some teaching job in far away Masbate, a province in the Visayas.

I guess it was in Masbate that she met her first husband, my father-in-law, I am not sure about this though, she never shared this part of her life with us.

But her life as a kid, she shared with us.

I remember ...

I was then mending the hemline of my daughter Sheila’s uniform. Mommy took a peek of what I was doing and said;

“When Feling, Osang, and I were in our teens, we made embroideries on children clothes for a high end store. They would bring these clothes in our place and pick them up when we are finished.”

“They said I was the best embroiderer because my stitches were small and neat ... I even got an award for that. We earned quite a sum during the depression because of this work,” she paused, took a glance in my direction again and then continued.

"I knew the trick on how to do stitches that looks like a machine stitch.”

I smiled to myself. Mommy never corrects someone directly. She can see my stitches were not neat but she did not want to hurt my feelings. It is her way of asking me if I needed help with my stitches.


                                                  Mommy's Passion 

Mommy and I had the same passion, sewing and gardening. The only difference is: she sews neatly and cultivates flowers, I sew in slipshod manner and grow vegetables.

Red bouganvilla


She loved Bougainvilleas. How her eyes lights up when she sees her Bougainvilla's profuse with flowers.

White bouganvilla













And she loved Gumamela’s too, particularly the single petal Gumamela’s. She said the single petal gumamelas are the real ones , that the new breeds do not look gumamelas anymore.
The double petal gumamela

The single petal gumamela


Her garden is so profuse with flowers that many who passed her house could not resist to stop and asked advice on how to have blooms like it. This certainly made Mommy happy but  time was catching up on her; she was getting old.

When the task of yard gardening put a toil on her back, she turned to a much smaller medium: dish gardening.

On a dish pot and using small wood sticks,  she would construct a small house with a garden and on some,  there would be  a river with a bridge. . They look so artistic and so nice to look at but the one that amazes me most ? ... her birds. They looked just like it's real counterpart; if it was a parrot, it would have  a parrot's colors, beak and tail;  I found out later that it was so because Mommy makes her birds with an open encyclopedia beside her.

But even the dish gardening has to go. Mr. Alzheimer's visit was becoming more frequent. Many times, we would catch her sitting on her patio, looking at her garden with eyes that seem to look farther than her flowers. I used to wonder then -  what is lurking in her mind?  What is it that gave her so much sadness ... a fathomless sadness ?

Mommy knew it was coming and perhaps it is this  realization that gave her so much sadness. She fought its coming with all her might but Mr. Alzheimer is such a formidable foe.
                                            
“Your Tio Ano sent me magazines and books about aging and taking care of oneself. I am reading them now. It says that if you read and keep yourself busy, it will halt the onset of Alzheimer’s. It is good that I never stopped reading, my mind is still alert.”

But even when she said this, I could sense some doubt on her voice.

Sometimes I would ‘stimulate’ her memory.
“Mommy, who is the youngest among you siblings? is it Tio Ado or Tio Itong?”

This simple question would keep her thinking and when she got the right answer from the deepest recesses of her brain, a triumphant smile would form on her lips.

“Oh no... It’s Ano. Yes, our youngest is my brother Ano.”

This time she won. But later on, she would find the answers buried in quicksand, the more she thought about them, the more they burrow deeper.

It took so much effort for her to dig the answers that it is almost painful to watch her puzzled expression. I forego the exercise.

Books, conversations, outside stimulation, they all cannot do anything to drive Mr. Alzheimer away. I sometimes wished there is a toothbrush that could brush away the plaques that by then has coated her memories.

 I remember ...

“Oh, this is a beautiful place, how come you did not bring me here before?”

“Mommy, we came here last Christmas. We bought your pretty white doily here, the one on your side table now, remember?” We answered, trying in vain to refresh her memory.

“We did?” then she would be silent. Mommy is frustrated, she is between knowing and not knowing, powerless, locked up behind the bars that Mr. Alzheimer constructed in her brain.

Later on she would ask the same question again, and then ... again, and then ... again. And we would answer her with the same answer again and ...again and ... again.

Frustrating, yes, but we are witness to her painstaking effort not to forget. She would often memorize the names of her siblings, hoping against hope that she would not forget.


 In the Beginning ...

The brothers, they go first.

“Feling is my sister and so is Osang, but my brothers ... what are the names of my brothers again? I forgot their names.”

Later on the sisters too, have to go.

“What is the name of my sister again?”

Then all the relatives disappeared.

“It is lonely not to have relatives ... do you have relatives?” she one day asked Ben.

“Mommy, I am your son and you have other children besides me, you should not be lonely, besides, you have plenty of relatives in Caloocan,” Ben replied.

"I have?"  and a smile would form on her lips.
                                    
It is painful to see her grasp on reality slowly slipping away. It is like seeing someone you love falling off a cliff in slow motion.

                      

Mommy is gone and yes,  Mr. Alzheimer won but only on Mommy's brain, not on the memories of her children and on those whose lives she had somehow touched,

The writer;

I am Neng Zaldivar, wife to Ben Zaldivar, the eldest of Olimpia's two son. As of this writing
Mr. Alzheimer has not found me yet but he may just be lurking round the corner. I want to preserve all that I remember before he comes knocking on my door.

I would like my grandchildren to meet their forebears, the people that though they can never meet, are part of their being. I want them to know their roots, their history.

But I am getting old. I may not be around anymore or my memory may not be around anymore when my grandchildren are ready to listen to my stories.

I will tell them the story of their grandmother now, while I still can.

                                       
                               OLIMPIA MALAPITAN ZALDIVAR BRAZAL'S CHILDREN

 
           
             
                           BEN, AGNES, WINNIE, EDNA, JANNEL, EDDIE, and LINDA.



                                                 MOMMY AND HER SIBLINGS



                                                             ADO,    FELING,    OSANG
                                                             ITONG,  MOMMY, ANO

For the rest of the Malapitan Clan (descendants of Sebastian Vicencio Malapitan of Arayat. Pampanga). pls go to;

https://grandmastalking.blogspot.com/p/sebastian-vicencio-malapitan-of-arayat.html

The writer;

I am Neng Zaldivar, wife to Ben Zaldivar, the eldest of Olimpia's two son. As of this writing
Mr. Alzheimer has not found me yet but he may just be lurking round the corner. I want to preserve all that I remember before he comes knocking on my door.

I would like my grandchildren to meet their forebears, the people that though they can never meet, are part of their being. I want them to know their roots, their history.

But I am getting old. I may not be around anymore or my memory may not be around anymore when my grandchildren are ready to listen to my stories.

I will tell them the story of their grandmother now, while I still can.

BACK TO HOME;            https://grandmastalking.blogspot.com/



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