Find Love Together – Logan Briana

I just finished six hours of dementia training and it reminded me of my mom. I haven’t talked too much about my mom and what happened to her, specifically on this platform.

When I was ten, my mom was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. It is a rare, degenerative fatal brain disease. It affects one in a million people a year. She started showing symptoms around August of 2006 and died that October.

People started noticing that something was wrong with her during our annual summer vacation at Ocean City, Maryland. She wasn’t verbal (which for her she could talk to someone in a line for hours upon just meeting them). During this week she was withdrawn and spent a lot of time alone in the bedroom.

Shortly after we came home she went to call the doctor to talk about how something was off. She told my aunt that she couldn’t. Her mind was telling her to pick up the phone, but physically she couldn’t. During this time she also lost her car keys (which that part is normal) but where she lost them is what made it off given other symptoms she was showing. Everyone who was in the house was frantically looking everywhere for these keys. I was standing in the kitchen staring at one place, the refrigerator, that even to a ten-year-old thought would be weird to leave keys at. I opened the refrigerator, and the keys were on a container of potato salad. I shut the door and shouted, “Found them.” Both Mom and Aunt Debbie came to me. I told them where and they didn’t believe me and I opened the door and showed them.

This initiated the first hospitalization. She wasn’t in the hospital too long the first time and home even shorter afterward before she went back to the hospital shortly after where she never left.

A lot of “big” events happened to me during these hospitalizations. I got braces. I started playing an instrument. Things that I was looking forward to doing with my mom but had to do with Aunt Debbie.

Months leading up to me getting my braces such as getting an expander, lip bumper, spacers I did with my mom. At this time I loved my aunt but she wasn’t my mom so I was scared to get my braces without my mom. I remember when I got them going to the hospital afterward to show my mom my braces. This was the first hospitalization so my mom seemed “normal,” but on the inside, I knew she wasn’t coming home, at least permanently.

When I started playing the flute, well when I actually went to practice because I missed weeks of practice because of my mom, I wanted to show mom what I had learned. At this time she was in a mental ward so I technically wasn’t allowed to see her because I wasn’t old enough since it homed dangerous people. Aunt Debbie persuaded them to let me see my mom. I remember being in the lobby waiting to see if I could and it felt like hours. I hadn’t seen my mom for a bit before this visit which probably made the wait feel longer. This visit my mom couldn’t talk at all. She was mentally aware of her surroundings but just couldn’t talk. I played my song but I remember all I wanted was to hear my mom’s voice. To be honest I don’t even remember playing my flute but sitting on Aunt Debbie’s lap just staring at my mom. I watched mom get frustrated because she couldn’t talk like she wanted. I wanted to hug her and make her all better.

It was shortly after this visit that Aunt Debbie got a call, on the way to visiting my mom, from my mom’s doctor that my mom wasn’t going to survive. My aunt felt so many emotions, obviously, because she was just told that her sister and best friend was going to die. Then she had to tell me. Aunt Debbie sat me down at the table in the kitchen. Her words, “Logan, I have to tell you something. It’s about your mom.” I don’t even think I said words because I knew what she was going to tell me. I nodded and continued scribbling on a newspaper trying to control my emotions. Aunt Debbie then went on to say, “Your mom is going to die.” I didn’t show much emotion so she went on to say, “Honey, do you understand what that means.” I nodded and looked up crying. I sat at that table for what felt like hours. The table that once brought me joy with whatever new toy I got since I opened and played with them there.

I remember this short but long time of watching my mom deteriorate. I watched her dementia get worse. God also had his hands all over the situation since the days I visited my mom, she was cognisant. Even when she was having more days where dementia took her away, she usually ended up coming back to reality when I visited. I think I was really one of the only things that truly brought her to reality. One of the things I got for mom in the hospital gift store was a singing teddy bear. When she became almost completely delusional from the disease she played that teddy bear on repeat that the nurses got annoyed and switched it off. She didn’t let that bear get too far from her though because it was her part of me.

By this time I wasn’t really visiting her anymore. I remember nearly every day I would ask Aunt Debbie if mom was dead yet. I was just waiting because she had eventually fallen into a coma. I blocked a lot of this time out, and really only remember key parts. There are some things that Aunt Debbie brought up about this time that I don’t even remember. Like the day that I went to say goodbye to mom, Aunt Debbie had a huge fight with someone else in the room. I remember standing and seeing mom laying there in the coma but I have no recall of the fight.

To this day I will randomly remember something from this time that I had blocked out. Right after my mom died, I shut down where I barely talked the following couple of years. Then after watching Aunt Debbie die it triggered some things about my mom. I started to remeber how much I loved mom and how much she loved me. She also became my mom again because in ways Aunt Debbie had taken that role. I think remembering some of these things is what triggered me to start to truly mourn my mom this past year or two, over twelve years after her death.

My mom had a lot of struggles that came with the family she was born in which lead to her own struggles of addiction and such. She worked to try to make a decent life for her and then an amazing life for me. She worked hard to make sure that her life didn’t affect mine so she hid any of her past such as being HIV+, addict, or stripper with anyone it would affect with how they would perceive me. We lived in a richer area so she wanted to give people the illusion that that was what I was from over the poverty and addiction and everything else that I was actually from.

I am thankful to have such an amazing and strong person as a mom. Her strength and drive are what push me to continue through all of the times I want to quit. I know I wouldn’t have pushed nearly as much as I have if I hadn’t had my mom as my motivation.