June 15, 2013 I read a blog post about Tess Gerritsen declaring war on Alzheimer’s. Her father died of the disease and she was raising funds to donate to research aimed battling this horrible disease.
One way she was doing this was asking for contributions, which she would match, up to $25,000. To provide an incentive to other authors and readers, she was offering the naming of a character in her new book, to two winners and some runner up prizes as well.
I found out that I was one of the winners and I knew immediately the character I was going to ask her to put in the book; Millie Jacobson, my mom, who suffered from Alzheimer’s.
Tess emailed me this last April “I think you’ll be happy to see that Millie has a very big role in this story!” Now I can’t wait to read it. I got another email recently that an author’s copy is on it’s way to me in the mail, so I don’t have to wait until December 30th to see what role Mom has in the story.
The book release is 12/30 and I thank Tess for honoring my mom and taking on Alzheimer’s.
The real Millie (Jacobson) Dorow
Millie was born on a small farm in Minnesota. She was one of 3 children born to a Swedish father and a German mother. I think she got some of her toughness from her mother, who I never knew. One story I liked that my mom told was how her mother thought that the kids should go to church service in English, so rather than just go to the German church down the road from the farm, she started taking the family into town to the English church service. The German church told her not to come back.
All three of the kids went to college. Mom studied social work and worked in adoptions for a long time and later ran operations for a senior living center after getting her masters, later in life.
One reason I love to write is because I love to read. Reading started on mom’s knee as she prepared us for kindergarten, making sure we knew how to read. She also modeled reading behavior by taking us to the book mobile that stopped at the shopping center a couple of blocks from our house to check out books. And for free time she also often read a book or a magazine.
Early 2000’s, mom was living alone. My dad had died and her four children were all living hours away from her. I started to hear from a few of her friends that things weren’t quite right and noticed that she wasn’t able to manage things herself the way she should. We scheduled her for some testing and the result was she has early signs of dementia and that she was probably able to cope to the level she was, because she was so smart.
We moved her to Minneapolis into an apartment so we could all be closer, somehow her four kids all settled in the Twin Cities area. She did OK on her own, at first. But then there were a couple of episodes of wandering, not knowing where she was or when it was. It was time to move her into an Alzheimer’s care facility.
Being the family of a person afflicted with this is hard. You don’t know what to do, what to look for, what your options are. We got lucky and found a great place with an opening. Mom did well there and the staff there treated her well. Bless the people that work in those jobs. Mom continued to worsen, lost the ability to speak, needed more assistance eating and caring for herself. But she always had a smile ready for those around her and a tap on their arm to show she appreciated them, even if she couldn’t say so.
I hope you don’t need to go through Alzheimer’s with a loved one, but if you do, remember patience, and love the memories you have, that they may have lost.
#alzheimerssucks