The Teakwood

January 22, 2014July 23, 2017 Sally3 Comments

Where did you spend your happiest memories with your loved one? Before all this, of course, were there special places you lived or traveled to that you can look back on and feel good about?

I forget how the topic came up. The way my parents used to tell the story, we were all begging to go to Myrtle Beach, because everyone else was, which just sounds wrong, because our family was never particularly susceptible to peer pressure. The way the story goes, though, is that we were all begging to go to Myrtle Beach so my father told us to pick out a place to stay and show it to him.

This was all back in the dark ages, before the internet. With a AAA membership, we were able to obtain a two-inch thick tourbook for the South Carolina. There was pages and pages of motels and hotels on the Grand Strand. Those little listing were hard to decipher, so my father suggested writing to the Chamber of Commerce in Myrtle Beach. I wrote the letter, and then had the thrill of receiving a whole bunch of mail. (Parents, if your children ever ask why they don’t get any mail, suggest they write to a chamber of commerce somewhere.)

With the stacks and stacks of brochures that arrived, we began culling through and narrowing down the search. I wanted a swimming pool. And small. Even then, I wanted someplace small and homey. Twelve stories simply doesn’t appeal to me, even if the rooms could face the ocean. Small, homey, swimming pool — yes, those were the criteria.

I found the perfect motel. It was called The Caravelle. It wasn’t huge. It had a swimming pool. It was right on the beach. Perfect.

Except they had no vacanices for the week we wanted to go.

So I went back to the pile of brochures and found our second choice. Small, homey, evening bridge games in the lounge (something I thought my parents would enjoy), a swimming pool, and a vacancy. We went to Teakwood Motel that year. And every year after that for about thirty years.

We patronized The Teakwood through several different owners and watched its decline. The last year we went the roof was covered with blue tarps and one of my children found an insulin needle under the bed. Now a parking lot for a high-rise hotel has replaced that motel.

In its heyday, though, The Teakwood was like family. We saw the same guests year after year. We knew the owners well, and one owner actually became family, in an extended sort of way.

There are so many, many memories of The Teakwood — an annual picture by The Teakwood sign, a bagpiper practicing in the Teaky Forest, cookouts, swimming in that pool, sliding down the slide into the pool (until they removed it for insurance reasons), kids freely going from room to room as we often booked four or more rooms in a row, crossing Ocean Boulevard to get to the ocean.

1989 -- picture by the Teakwood sign -- see the bottom of the "D"? — 1989 — picture by the Teakwood sign — see the bottom of the “D”?

Wandering from room to room at the Teakwood

The Caravelle is still in operation today. I would drive past it whenever we went to Myrtle Beach, just down the road from The Teakwood.

I’m thankful that the Caravelle was full in 1972.

Would my mother have gotten lost trying to find the post office from The Teakwood. (see Six Ways to Anywhere)? Probably not that year. That would have happened further down the Alzheimer’s road; The Teakwood was like a second home.

If there’s a special place for us, it’s a little mom-and-pop motel in Myrtle Beach called The Teakwood that has now gone to motel heaven.

A Month of Remembering

Scary Travels with Alzheimer’s

January 14, 2014May 3, 2017 Sally2 Comments

What is one of the scariest situations you have been in because of dementia?

Let’s face it — dementia can be a scary thing, for everyone involved. Every time I see another news story about someone with dementia wandering off, my stomach tightens. There, but for the grace of God, goes my mother.

My father recently told me a scary story. Years ago, my parents traveled with a church group to Macedonia, to walk where Paul walked. They had booked the trip during the days of denial, but there was no denying my mother’s dementia when it came time to leave. I was worried sick.

That’s probably why my father didn’t tell me this story when they first got home from the trip. Back then, he told me how the other ladies on the trip all helped with Mom. “They were great,” he said. “They really looked out for her.”

He saved this story to tell me years later.

In his words, “When we were in Greece, I needed to go find an ATM to get some more cash, so I told Mom to stay in our hotel room. I explained that I needed to go out, but that I would be back. She said she understood, but when I got back, she was gone.”

She had, indeed, left the hotel room alone. In a foreign country. Wandering off. Fortunately, some people from the tour saw her and kept her safe until my father came back. It could have been quite disastrous. There, but for the grace of God…

My own personal scary situation with my mother took place at JFK.

I’m still not sure of the reasoning behind taking my parents to JFK as opposed to an upstate airport. Maybe, what with my blurry memory and all, it was for that same international trip, and the trip originated from JFK. I think, though, that it was a trip to Florida. We thought a direct flight to Florida would be so much easier than trying to make connections.

Whatever the reason, there we were at JFK — me and my parents. I pulled right up to the door, dropped them off, parked in the short-term parking, and ran over to the terminal to make sure everything went okay.

By the time I got there, they were already well-entrenched in the snaking line leading to the security checkpoint. I stood and watched as they inched forward. My father turned and waved at me. He got my mother to do the same.

Slowly, slowly, they worked their way to the stacks of trays, the conveyor belts, and the scanner.

I watched my parents each take off their shoes and put them in their respective trays. A TSA agent told my mother to remove her jacket, which she did, and that went into the tray too.

My father, moving much more slowly than my mother, was still untying his shoes.

My mother spryly moved her way through the line, putting more and more distance between herself and my father. I stood, helplessly, at a rope barrier watching.

A security guard stood near me. “Excuse me,” I said to him. “My mother has Alzheimer’s and she is getting separated from my father at the checkpoint.”

He glanced in the direction I pointed, shrugged, and said, “I can’t really do anything about that.”

Even as I spoke with him, I could see my mother pass through the checkpoint and grab her jacket and shoes. My father was still by the trays.

“I really need to get in there to help her,” I told the guard.

He shrugged again, unmoved. “I can’t do anything,” he repeated.

My mother had her shoes on as my father was walking through the metal detector. She was heading out of my sight down a corridor. “Please, sir,” I begged the guard.

“Next time ask for a pass to accompany them through the gate,” he said, but he refused to make eye contact with me. He stared resolutely ahead. I felt like I was talking to a wall.

My father made it through the checkpoint and I could see him sitting to put his shoes on. My mother was nowhere in sight. There was, quite literally, nothing I could do.

I watched him finish tying his shoes and slowly move down the same corridor where my mother had disappeared. I felt like I had swallowed a boulder. The security guard, impassive, had moved away from me and was talking with someone else.

My final hope was to call my father on his cell phone. Of course, he didn’t have it turned on.

I dejectedly turned to leave, but made one last appeal at a help desk. The woman was so nice, but, of course, couldn’t help me. She offered me the same advice as the guard — get a gate pass, but it had to be done with the ticketed passenger with me; I couldn’t do it after the fact.

Of course, when I left JFK that day, I got lost in Manhattan and cried.

My father and my mother found each other in the airport. It all turned out okay in the end.

Still. Scary is an understatement for those events.

Because of situations like this, few things have built my faith more than Alzheimer’s. The rope barrier at JFK might as well have been the gulf between Lazarus and the rich man. (see Luke 16:19-31) With no way to cross it, only helpless feelings welled up inside as I stood and watched.

Prayer is my main refuge.

I am not in the hell of the rich man, though some describe care-giving in such negative terms. No, I am stuck at a rope barrier, talking not to Abraham, or an impassive security guard, but to God Himself.

I’m watching my mother as she is carried into Abraham’s bosom.

It is a slow, sometimes scary, good-bye.

A Month of Remembering

Six Ways to Anywhere

January 2, 2014July 23, 2017 Sally3 Comments

What was the first indication you had that something was not right? Was it a peculiar behavior or a specific incident?

My mother always knew six ways to anywhere. And the rest stops along the way. And the quality of the bathrooms at the rest areas.

This was in the days before GPS. We used old-fashioned paper accordion-folded maps. Not that my mother needed them. It was all in her head. For longer trips, she would order AAA TripTiks, but I think were more for us than for her. We could learn the names of the roads and where the rest stops were by using them. Her mind, however, was a veritable road atlas.

That’s why when she got lost, it stuck out.

Of course there had been little signs, little things she forgot or repeated. When I do that now, I’m just sure that it’s the first sign of Alzheimer’s. I think we all have those fears.

But my mother getting lost? That was almost unheard of.

We were in Myrtle Beach — my mom and dad, my sister and her husband, and my family. We were all in Myrtle Beach at the time-share condo that my father had ~~been snookered into~~ purchased.

The area was very familiar because we had been going to the same place for a number of years. Mom decided to make a quick trip to the Post Office to mail out the postcards she had written. Helen, probably 10 or 11 at the time, went along for the ride.

I should add here, that if any of my children have inherited my mother’s internal atlas, it’s Helen. Even at that age, she knew her way around and remembered roads better than I ever will.

So off they went to the Post Office while we hung around the pool.

They were gone for a very long time.

You know how it is. At first, no one thinks anything of it. Oh,they’re gone to the Post Office.

Then, someone asks where they are. They went to the Post Office a while ago.

A little later, someone asks when exactly did they leave for the Post Office.

You start wondering, how long have they been gone?

Then the misgivings begin, and a thousand scenarios, most of them bad, start playing in your mind.

It was well over an hour, maybe a lot longer, before the car pulled back into the parking lot. Helen’s eyes were big. She pulled us aside and she said, “Grammie got lost.”

The Post Office, only about a mile away, was elusive for my mother that day. It was so unheard of.

My sister and I whispered about it. Something wasn’t right. All the other little things suddenly took on new significance. Maybe there was something more going on.

As it turns out, that something more was Alzheimer’s.