No. 23 Adventures in Alzheimers: Felony Edition

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Adventures in Alzheimers: The Felony Edition

I awoke to find eleven voicemail messages. Since I’m not *that* popular, I was alarmed.

“Hi honey, it’s me,” Mom said with her familiar chirpy warmth. She’s always been an early riser, generally in the 4-5 am range. It’s an obscene time of day. I am awake at that hour for only two things: an overnight flight or an extinction-level cataclysm. “I’m going to go downstairs and have breakfast here at this hotel. I thought you said you were going to come and see me today, cause I have nowhere else to go, and I am out of money. They’re probably going to kick me out. Okay, I’ll talk to you later.”

The female voicemail narrator said, with offensive optimism, “Next message.”

“Hi, honey. I got a problem,” Mom said. Her tone was more direct, but still upbeat. “I’m at the hotel. I have run out of money. And, of course, I have to pay for my meals two or three times a day. I don’t know what else to do. Maybe you could bring me some. Bye.”

I sighed, a familiar crush of sadness flattening me back into the bed. After a decade with dementia, my mother had moved to an assisted living facility. Her private studio apartment is paid monthly and comes with meals, entertainment, and access to twenty-four hour assistance.

She hates it.

Over the months, she’s created a different, preferred story to live. She is staying at a hotel until she can once again resume her real, independent life and lodging.

“Next message,” the voicemail continued.

“I think I just called,” Mom said. Her voice had dropped, and she spoke with more urgency. “I have no cash. NO CASH to pay for staying here tonight. Calling to see if you could help me get to the bank. I don’t know what to do. Or you could pay for me and I could reimburse you. If you could please let me know. I don’t know what the phone number here is. Thank you. Love you. Bye.”

The day that my sister and I moved her into assisted living, Mom had about thirty dollars in her wallet. A couple of days later, her money was gone. She had insisted on paying for the included meal and giving a tip. She’s poor, not cheap.

The staff were very good about placing the money in a locked cabinet in her apartment. However, the director of the program let me know that might not always be the case, and that we shouldn’t let her keep cash. Her wallet remained empty, and daily panicked phone calls started.

“Next message.”

“I’m getting really nervous about something,” Mom said. “If I’m going to leave, I don’t have enough money to. I’ll be in trouble. What the hell, I should be used to it, right? Shit. I can’t find [rustles through wallet] I won’t know what to do in the morning. I’ll be up shit creek. Call me back.”

“Next message.”

“Not sure if I already told you this. I’m at the hotel. And I’m going to sit here until you come. If you could bring me a little cash so I can pay for my room, then we can go to the bank because I’m broke. If you can’t come, then let me know so I won’t be late for any classes or anything. I know you can help me straighten things out.”

“Next message.”

“It’s me again. I have run out of money and I was thinking that you could come over and get me…” I hit delete.

“Next message.”

“I don’t want to be a pest, but I’m very short on cash.”

Delete.

“I’m getting worried. I’d still like to stay here but I’m low on money and I’ll have to leave. And if I do, where the fuck am I supposed to go?”

I deleted the rest of the messages. Without even having gone vertical for the first time that day, I felt defeated. No matter how many times I had explained to my mom that she was in no danger of homelessness or going hungry, she couldn’t remember it. The daily deluge of calls depressed me. Worse, I hated that my mother lived in a constant state of distress when it was wholly unnecessary.

In the previous weeks, I had tried to alleviate her anxiety by taping notes around her apartment: Your room and meals are paid. No need to worry! She didn’t read them. Often, I found them torn straight through the DO NOT REMOVE at the top of the note and thrown in the trash.

My husband, Tim, set out to solve the problem.

One night after I went to bed, he took a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet, placed it on the printer, and pressed COPY. The machine whirred to life. Light scanned across the glass and the money. Paper moved through the rollers, across the ink jet, and slid face down out the front.

A small slice of the twenty had copied in great detail, but not the whole bill. Tim hit print again. The next sheet of paper came out the same way. He tried repositioning the bill on the printer bed, and hit copy a third, fourth, fifth and fourteenth time with the same results.

I prefer to think of him as determined, not learning impaired.

He Googled “printer won’t copy money.” Come to find out, modern printers are, by design, incapable of printing money as part of an anti-forgery and counterfeiting initiative called “Secure printing.”

Tim next Googled “is it illegal to print money.” The answer is yes. Yes, it is.

(Did I say this was a real story? Pleazzzzze. Nobody would be dumb enough to commit an unintentional felony and then write about it.)

Not one to be easily discouraged, Tim forged ahead, so to speak. He downloaded an image of money and printed that instead. Three times. Front and back, and somehow lined them up just so.

The failed attempts were strewn willy-nilly in the recycle bin, happy felony slices of money destined for the larger world. Tim thought better of it, and retrieved them. Best not to leave any evidence. He decided to torch them. In my best bowl. On the kitchen counter.

I prefer to think of him as creative.

In his mind, the pages would burn in a controlled and civilized manner. When he lit the first page, though, flames spiked to kitchen ceiling. Smoke filled the room, and he feared the alarms would wake us all. He grabbed the bowl with his bare hands, and dropped it.

I prefer to think of him as fast acting.

He donned oven mitts, and carried the bowl at arms’ length so his beard didn’t catch fire. With his hands full, he couldn’t turn the doorknob. He set the bowl down on the floor and opened the door. A gust of wind blew the flames to twice their height and sent ashes flying everywhere.

I can’t think of a positive spin for that one.

In the morning, three bright white bills with fuzzy black printing and zeroed out serial numbers waited for me on the counter. #husbandgoals

I slipped the “money” into my mother’s wallet the next day when I went to visit. We walked down the hall to her apartment hand in hand. She stopped to chat with the activities director who was rummaging in the art closet. “This is my daughter,” Mom said with such obvious pride that my heart cracked.

Cherry and I had been introduced half a dozen times already. “We just love your mom. She’s so much fun.”

“Not as fun as you good-lookin’!” my mom said, pointing a knowing finger at her.

We continued down the hall and around the corner, passing a tightly-permed woman with a walker making her way to the dining area.

“Hey Toots!” my mom said to her. The woman gave us a vague, placid smile as we passed. “She’s a complete bitch,” Mom whispered.

When we had settled into our regular spots in her studio, me in the armchair, Mom on her single bed, she said, “I’m a little worried about something.” I knew where this was going.

“No need to worry, Ma. You’ve got plenty of money to pay for the room.”

“Let’s see,” she said with obvious disbelief, opening her wallet. “Whoo! Look at that!” She fanned three bright-white twenty dollar bills in front of her face. “These don’t even seem real.”

“I think the design changed recently.”

She shrugged, content, and placed them back in her wallet. On my way out, I let the program director know that my mom was flush with oversized Monopoly money. The tension in my stomach eased a little. The fake bills had given her some peace of mind. I hoped it would last.

I didn’t have any panicked phone calls for the rest of the day. When I woke up the next morning, four voicemails waited. “Hi honey, I have a problem…” Her fake money was already gone. She had probably spent it on tips, or hidden it.

I had no intention of firing up our criminal counterfeiting enterprise again. My friend, after a hearty guffaw, solved my dilemma with play money purchased on Amazon instead. She gave me several thousand dollars in different denominations, and they looked a lot more real than our homemade version.

When next I saw my mother, I slipped a few hundred dollars into her wallet once again. Thinking to head off her worry before it started, I said “I gave you some money, Ma. So you don’t have to worry about paying for the hotel.”

Mom waved me off. “Oh, keep it. It’s not like they ever charge me anyway.”

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