Sake into water

Okaasan is 85 years young.
Yesterday we celebrated by taking her to a fancy crab restaurant downtown - private room, multi-course dinner of yummy crab parts... and some miracle working.

Dear Son, who is trying hard to become an  alcoholic, insisted that we go for the all-you-can-drink plan at the restaurant. I'm not too bothered if I drink alcohol or not at this kind of family duty meal. Okaasan shouldn't drink more than a small amount. And he can out drink a fish. So really he was choosing only for him. Typical Japanese male. All members of the group have to have the same plan. It's an aspect of Japan I don't like. The pressure to drink.

Anyway. He started drinking beers. I ordered one wine. Okaasan ordered sake and it came in a little glass bottle so she could pour endless top ups into a small glass for herself.

Dangerous.

Just dangerous. I KNEW this was going to happen. Why didn't DS think the same?

He knows what his mum is like....why oh why oh why did he think this was a good idea?

After she'd downed two glasses of sake in five minutes I took control. We couldn't let her drink like this and get sick...on her birthday, in a public place....on a hot night...at age 85.

So.

I ordered a glass of water for myself, then distracted Okaasan with chat about the menu descriptions - and with my left hand grabbed the sake bottle and hid it under my side of the table. Poured the sake out into an other container, poured the water in - added a tiny amount of sake for taste - and sneaked it back onto the table behind Okaasan's tabletop cooking pot.

Held my breath....when she reached for the sake bottle....and....she drank it....no comment at all about "this sake tastes weak" or "this isn't sake!!".

We continued our dinner.

Then the waitress brought out the Birthday Surprise for the celebrating guest. We'd expected a few candles in a small cake or something. A little present from the restaurant.

It was a traditional (but actually plastic) keg of...sake! Huge amount. 

Okaasan was delighted. Of course. She banged the keg top with a mallet - see picture - and the waitress opened up a golden ball with streamers and Congrats message.

Now we had even MORE sake to spirit away :-(

So we let her drink a little of the keg. We drank some too. 

Then...more distracting...more under the table hiding, transferring, rebottling of water...and DS and I ended up drinking a whole lot of sake ourselves. Neither of us really like sake...but it had to be done.

Okaasan never noticed me moving the bottle and returning it to the table top. She never noticed that she was actually drinking water. Strange. But a relief. Sake looks like water too - that is a BIG help. 

Meanwhile under the table on the tatami mat near my handbag I had a whole collection of glasses and sake box cups filled with variations on the sake to water miracle.....

Happy Birthday Okaasan.

Roll on another year....

Alcohol and blossoms

Alcohol and cherry blossoms go together in Japan - as the nation celebrates the flowering with parties under the trees and over-consumption of various brews....always a bit of a shock to Muslim visitors who come here for the flowers and are met with scenes of debauchery. I've heard that they sometimes complain to tour guides. Who can't do a whole lot about the debauchery of course...

In our family we are also keeping our flowers and alcohol separate. And our alcohol under strict control...

Okaasan bought the bottle of plum wine for herself. I luckily found it when I was checking her bag for yogurts and half-eaten bread rolls. Dangerous! No way should Okaasan have even this small bottle of alcohol in her room without our supervision.

She drinks alcohol like water. Actually with a lot more gusto - tipping her head back and draining the last precious drop into her mouth. Even shaking the glass like a child trying to get the very, very last drop. All that in about 2-3 minutes. If there is alcohol in front of her she ignores the food and drinks all the alcohol first.

So I spirited away the plum wine. Now we are giving her small amounts at dinner time, mixed with water. But if we have alcohol in our glasses Okaasan spies it and wants some. We'll be on water at dinner times soon!

I think many alcoholics develop dementia as alcohol kills off brain cells. But I bet any dementia sufferers can easily become alcoholics too - with an uncontrolled pleasure in drinking and no sense of how much they've consumed.

So Okaasan's alcohol is carefully monitored. A drunk Okaasan is not something I wanna see...or deal with. Although...I wonder what kind of drunk she is? Over the top happy or angry?

 *********************

And cherry blossoms - lots and lots in Sapporo now. 10 days too early and all flowering in the city parks. Dear Son took Okaasan out to visit a park, because on her regular walk round the neighborhood she only every goes to the supermarket and the Seicomart. 

So he took her out for a walk in a big park. Walk and a sit down near the lake to enjoy an ice cream. Great son and mother bonding time. Sunshine. Flowers. Ice cream.

That evening at dinner - Okaasan had NO memory at all of all of that. Zilch. Poor DS! He gave up his time to make mum happy and she didn't remember it!

When I asked about the trip she replied with vague general statements about cherry blossoms in the city now. The hours with DS chatting, walking and enjoying ice cream? All gone.

Of course the pleasure from those experiences must have been with her - which is a big positive. But the memory of 4 hours ago had gone.

This is of course why Okaasan has less and less conversation to offer - we usually talk about what we've seen or done, or we ask conversation partners about what they've seen or done. Dementia robs you of any memory of "seen" and "done"...so you can't talk about it.

The only "seen" and "done" is years and years ago.

As Okaasan drinks the plum wine she tells us (many times) about a woman who lived near her home in Saitama, and how the woman had plum trees and gave Okaasan old plums to make plum wine with etc. That story is there. Still.

Happy Golden Week everyone!

I'm home with Okaasan, the cats and the garden. Planning to do a whole lot of nothing much.

A little film screening promotion work. Dinner with friends. Movies. 2 months of accounts inputting on the computer.

And alcohol rationing!

Springing forward

Maybe.
"Spring" as a concept is almost here in Sapporo.
Sometimes. Maybe.
There are days of warm sunshine, when crocus flowers crowd the gardens and park. We walk around smiling.
Then there are days of ear-burning temperatures, swirling snow flakes. Hunched shoulders and grimaces.

Okaasan is alternatively out and about vs snuggled in the heated table asleep.
Her solo walking is getting more regular and safer. A few times coming home late and tired. A few times with no telephone/GPS. No falls.
Dear Son has been home more as the ski season sputters on - so Okaasan has had more conversation and family mealtimes. She even washed up the dinner dishes twice - but the fact that I remember that and recall it here shows you how irregular that action is.

We notice little things about Okaasan and her life-view that tell us her brain cells are drifting away, although day to day she is a happy old lady - giggly and smiley.

* VERY giggly and smiley if she can get alcohol! We have just finished the small bottle of sake that we've been giving her tiny amounts of at dinner time recently. We pour a little in a cup and then hide the bottle quickly.
On the last night I gave Okaasan the bottle and cup so she could look at the label and pour for herself. She put the bottle to her lips, threw back her head - and downed the remaining sake in one! Guy style!
No Japanese ladies of her generation - and probably many generations after too - would ever do something as uncouth as that :-) It's a childlike untrammeled joy in something tasting good. Very uncharacteristic of a polite, elderly lady.
And a very good reason for hiding bottles of alcohol.
I think the day is a-coming when DS and I won't be able to have glasses/cans of alcohol on the dinner table - because if we have it and Okaasan spies it - she wants it, and more, and more...

* Another evening we gave her the box of heated rice and her rice bowl to serve herself. However, there was a tea cup in front of her too - and I watched Okaasan carefully move the steaming rice with her chopsticks - from the box into the tea cup.

Giggles all round.

* Missing stories:

Sad proof that one of Okaasan's old stories has gone - temporarily or for ever.

I have a new student who is born in Japan, but introduces himself as Korean. I was talking about that with Okaasan. How many such people have "yagi" as part of their Japanese family name etc.
I waited for her once-familiar story to appear: My friend at school was called Tamako Yagi, but the day the war ended, she never came back to school - maybe she was Korean and her family went back? 
I've heard that story a million times. Three/four years ago.
Now I told my story a few times, she told me that "Yagi" is a common name used by Korean families in Japan etc. But her school friend's story didn't emerge.
THEN I told her story as if it were my own.
One of my students wartime had a school friend named Tamako Yagi, but the day war ended she didn't come back to school...
Nothing.
Okaasan just made "really? Yagi is a name used by Koreans in Japan" replies. 
Her own story, once an endless part of her repertoire, just gone?

As a reader of this blog commented once: the annoying, repeated stories become almost like friends - when they have apparently gone, you kind of miss them.

The Oliver James book Contented Dementia recommends identifying A Primary Theme - a story/experience that the "client" holds special, that as the dementia progresses you can use to enter their world by key words/gestures - when speech is disappearing.

I made a list of Okaasan's favorite stories when I read the book - four years ago?

1. Korean food is best - New York and the JTB guide - Ikebukuro restaurant.
2. Tamako Yagi and school.
3. Father bought crab home and I waited up for him.
4. Father drank sake and gave me drinking snacks.
5. Our house had a telephone and neighbors came to use it.
6. War started and there were no lessons, I made army underwear and picked vegetables. No food.
7. I played with my brothers by the river.
8.The US didn't bomb Kawagoe because of its history.

Now? 1 and 2 seem to have gone. We don't hear those stories now. Even if we prompt with the key words. The others are maybe there - 6 and 8 particularly.
And so it goes....

MY life - and kind DS too - was rather than over my the cat crisis of a close friend. One of her indoor cats vanished for 9 days. As she had just come out of hospital after knee replacement, we headed the search for her - with a poster and flyer blitz of the neighborhood. Police and vets and every possible way we could think. Rushing away with a cat trap in the middle of dinner when a possible sighting was reported etc
On the 9th day - my friend found cat poop and hairs in her English classroom........
A few hours later she had caught her kitty and he is fine. We are all amazed.

And.

Plans for the screening of Mainichi ga Alzheimer/Everyday is Alzheimer, the documentary films by Yuka Sekiguchi - plans are in motion. Just about to get the event flyer printed...6 weeks now to the event, time to crank up the promotion and gather a screening day team for May 23.

More on that later.

I see sunshine and blue sky...it may be spring...I should go check. :-)

Peeking through the dementia fog.

Dementia isn't 24/7.


At least not at Okaasan's stage.
Anybody meeting Okaasan for a short time wouldn't think anything is different: just a nice old lady who says various stock phrases about the weather/food/names/traditions...and maybe repeats them a bit.
Spend a bit of time and you realize the phrases are repeated a lot and nothing much "new" is offered into a conversation, instead slightly inappropriate giggles and endless checking actions.
Living with her: silences and emotional highs. Sometimes fluid responses to chat and almost-normal conversations. Sometimes hamster-wheels.


And sometimes: wonderful moments of clarity.


Last night Yujiro and I had our usual pre-dinner glass of wine and nibbles of cheese upstairs when he came back from work.
Then I made dinner (stir-fried squid and ginger/cabbage/rice, soup, pickles - really GETTING this J-food cooking now :-)).
Called everyone to the table around 7 pm.
Yujiro came with the last centimeter of red wine in his glasss. I'd already quaffed mine and refilled my glass with water so I could take my menopause and cartilage supplement pills.


We all sat down and said: "Itadekimasu" (Thanks for the food, let's eat) standard Japanese phrase before eating anything.


Okaasan looked across the table at our wine glasses....


"Excuse me, but can I have something to drink? You've got red wine! You've got sake!"


??????!!!!!! Loved it.
Yujiro explained that he was finishing off some wine, and I'd got water, not sake.....and Okaasan was ok with that excuse and busied herself making tea (which took ages with all the checking of water and cup and tea and water and cup and tea..).


But it was sweet. Complete clarity of mind and expression of need.:-)
This on a day when she'd needed reminding to have a bath, needed lunch setting out for her, and has a wet towel in a bowl sitting on the carpet of her room....amid the dementia life-fog complete clarity of thought and awareness of surroundings.


Okaasan loves a drink. A bit dangerously so in fact, because she can't remember HOW much she has drunk and tends to knock it back unguardedly. Over the New Year holidays must remember to bring some alcohol to the dinner table for her. :-))