The Deadly Dance With God

Years ago as little girl my older brothers teased me with the shared goal to drive me insane. When I started school and was provoked by my peers, I would defend myself like they were my brothers by throwing a fit followed by a fist. My completely Catholic mom would take me aside and ask me, "Rachel, do you know where God lives?" I would shake my head no while wiping my nose and she would say, "God lives in the hearts of each one of us. When you hurt someone else, it's like you're hurting God."

My mom's name is Loretta and she just turned fifty this past September. Due to her rapid loss of basic bodily functions we had to move her from her assisted-living facility to a nursing home before Christmas. Under regular aging conditions, this scenario would not be abnormal, but how does a middle-of-her-life Corporate Product Coordinator and mother of three grown children suddenly begin to loss her mind? Who or what hurt the God inside of her so badly?

Although I am not a scientist or medical doctor, it is my mission as a daughter to find the cause of my mother's dementia and/or early on-set Alzheimer's disease at the tender age of forty-eight. One of the many difficulties in learning and dealing with this disease is that it is not diagnosable until post mortem, when the brain can be dissected. One can only speculate about the cause of her deterioration.

Loretta was born in 1956 as the third child to a New Jersey, full-blooded Italian family of eventually eight. As a young girl she was highly competitive in basketball, field hockey and softball until she realized her artistic talents.