Ine van Emmerik
My mother was a widow since fifteen years and very independent when her memory declined rapidly and she was diagnosed with Alzheimer. Together with her, and more and more without her, I had to take big decisions with my two sisters, such as selling her house and moving into a home (and later a nursing home) . Once in the nursing home, we put all our love in caring for the simple everyday things, hings she found important her entire life. We visited weekly and took flowers with us, arranged the visits to the hairdresser, put pictures of past and present in her room, maintained contact with her family, friends and old neighbours, and we took care of the laundry.
We agreed with the nursing staff that we would wash our mother’s clothes. We soon discovered that we could not simply hang it in the closet as sometimes she would be dressed in an extremely colourful set of clothes. Other times she wore them too long, and then it was just not fresh. While another day all the clothes were in the laundry after one day. My youngest sister came up with a practical system: every week we prepared a set of clothes on a hanger, with a note for the specific day it should be worn. The staff did not have to take care of it anymore and we washed the dirty laundry and put them back on the hangers. It became a common saying between us sisters: “Do you have laundry?” There was always a bag of laundry going from Brabant to Utrecht and back.
For my mother it had always been important to be properly dressed. Because of the Alzheimer however, her preferences changed. Suddenly she didn’t like a specific colour anymore or she found that a piece of clothing was too ‘exposed’. Yet, her sense of style still made her who she was. By ensuring this we kept her alive. In addition, my mother worked her whole life to ensure we were dressed properly. As adolescents, we of course had different views on that, which she –off course- regretted, but she did what she could. When cleaning out my mother’s last stuff, cleaning up her clothes might have been the most difficult. It was so attached to her as a person, but also to all the care for her. A friend gave me a good idea. Part of her clothes I sent to Morocco, where local weavers transformed it into a Carpet of Life which is now hanging in my home, a symbol of the connection of care between my mother and me.
Ine van Emmerik is co-author of “Help, mijn moeder wordt oud!” stories from children about aging parents.