Hamburger
[after Mom had been livbing with us for over two years - July/22]:
As a second generation Italian American my mother was always a foodie. She always loved to eat and she used to love to cook. Food has always meant love. “It’s your birthday, I’ll make whatever you want,” she’d say. This lead to mom making homemade pizza in July in a house without air conditioning. Pizza was what I wanted and she knew it would taste better than any pizza we could possibly get delivered (unless it was delivered from Italy of course).
Yet now that she has demential mom can’t describe food as well, let alone make any meals. Recently we ordered from our local Diner and I decided to use visuals to help mom choose what to eat for dinner. Word association is becoming more and more difficult for her, she uses color instead of words. “The green” means broccoli, “the white” is milk. So I thought that it would help her to associate the name of the food if I showed her pictures. Since we have ordered from the diner almost weekly since CoVid started (to give me a little break from cooking for 5 people), the rest of the family has the menu memorized (and of course any “Diner” has the standard choices). I was proud of my idea to use images and was surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner. I was just trying to empower my mom in any way possible. I’ve been making the food each night, serving it to her, adding condiments (because I know she forgot what condiments are) and whenever we go out to eat or order I choose her meal from the menu, because she is completely confused by the process. I know she is struggling for words and I thought perhaps if I show her the picture of a hamburger she’ll surely remember the image and the way she has liked her hamburgers for her 80 years - medium rare, red meat juicy with ketchup, lettuce, a fresh tomato and roll. Or maybe the picture of the chicken panini that she has enjoyed many times before will trigger something inside her, or an image of a tuna melt might help, because last week she tried my tuna melt and really enjoyed the taste. I just wanted her to associate the pictures with a feeling, a memory, (please God) something... I wanted her to remember something.
I showed her the three pictures of those items I know she has had from the diner before. “What is that?” she said about the hamburger. “A hamburger, mom” I wanted to sound encouraging, but I wound up sounding exasperated. She just said, “hmm”. Next I showed her the panini and I wasn’t sure if she remembered it or not, but upon viewing it she just outwardly rejected it with an emphatic , “no,” (perhaps she was getting sick of having it almost weekly). The tuna melt image triggered a little more curiosity. “Is that the thing with the thing,” at least the tuna made her search for some words. “It’s fish mom the one that I sometimes make in a sandwich? You remember?” Before trying to remember anything more about tuna fish she just gave up and said, “the first one.” That was the hamburger.
“Bingo!” I thought to myself! That’s the image that goes farthest back in memory, countless hamburgers she made in her life, the grilling she forced my dad to do when they were together. Hamburgers. The 1970’s family living on the teacher’s salary cutting coupons for the “BOGO” buy one/get one hamburger free at the fast food restaurants (I remember McDonalds, Burger King, Arthur Treachers were all just beginning to expand and replicate uncontrollably). Yes, of course she wanted the hamburger the universal shared memory. I was proud of my picture exercise and left mom’s room to go place the order.
Later as we were all eating at the dining room table, mom was enjoying her hamburger and she stopped and smiled at me. She said it was good and then she pointed to the meat inside. “What is this thing here?” “It’s meat mom, ground beef,” Mom looked confused “oh huh, good, “ she said in her toddler vocabulary. I realized she actually didn’t remember the hamburger at all. She just went for the picture that perhaps looked the nicest.
This from a woman who used to be almost a gourmet chef. When I was growing up she cooked daily meals for her unappreciative family of four. She was meticulous about including fresh vegetables and also careful to give us variety. She researched the savoriest recipes in the New York Times’ Craig Claiborne cookbook and other best selling cookbooks of the time. This was a woman who loved food so much she’d wake up every morning planning all her meals. When we went on vacation this woman, my mother used to spend hours reading and comparing 2 -3 guidebooks to pick the best restaurants to go try in Los Angeles, Montreal, Cancun, wherever we were. A woman who made the most amazing Christmas dinner every year for the whole extended family of over 20 people.
I remember they say dementia is a long goodbye and I have to say goodbye to the mom who taught me everything know about food.