I performed one final test before a trip back home to San Francisco . Instead of telling my dad , I planned the entire trip for weeks with my mom . She was writing it in her calendar , she said . She would get my dad to pick me up , she promised . And then just before I left New York , when I finally called my dad and told him I would be coming , he was alarmed and pleasantly surprised . I got that dreadful feeling where your skin gets heavy , and that night in bed , I cried real quiet-like so that my girlfriend , who is now my wife , wouldn ’ t hear me .
A few days later , finally in San Francisco , I asked my mom to meet me for coffee downtown . We talked normally for a bit , but I saw my chance when she said , “ Sometimes I forget things .”
I asked her if she was worried about it . She said not really . It ’ s aging and everybody forgets things . She said I hope you don ’ t think your dad doesn ’ t forget things . She said sometimes my dad would get on her for forgetting something but then she would remember some distant story or fact and he ’ d ask , how did you remember that ?
I asked if she would be open to going to a doctor about it , just to be safe . She said she had a doctor and that doctor never had any concern about her memory . She said I hope you don ’ t think your dad doesn ’ t forget things . I asked her if she would get tested if that doctor asked her to ? She said of course .
I asked for her doctor ’ s name . She told me . Then she told me that the funniest thing is sometimes my dad would get on her for forgetting something but then she would remember some distant story or fact and he would ask , how did you remember that ?
I contacted her doctor , asked her to
Threading Memories : To fight off the early symptoms of the disease , Conor ’ s mom knit thousands of scarves .
recommend some tests , and then asked her , please , please , please don ’ t tell my mom I was the one who called you .
About a week later , my mom was alarmed to find the brass mailbox at their house stuffed with a big packet full of questionnaires and glossy brochures filled with the A-word . She called the doctor to ask what this was all about , and the doctor said your son called me because he is worried about your memory . So much for the doctor protecting the rat .
The inevitable blow-up would be too personal for the phone , so it was destined to happen on my parents ’ next visit to New York , and the Museum of Natural History ended up being the venue . Straight from the stranger than fiction department , when we walked into the museum we were met by big signs announcing a special exhibit on the brain . It cost extra and I walked by it like LaLaLaLa nothing to see here , but my dad bought tickets and we walked through it in silence as if there was a foul smell everyone was too polite to mention .
Later we drifted to the Hall of Ocean Life with its suspended whale , when dad left for a bathroom break and mom and I commenced a scene .
Why did you do that ? she said . She was clenched but quiet the way people do when they are trying to convey being pissed off in public . I said because I thought something was wrong . She said , but this was about me . You should tell , me ! she said louder .
I told her I did it because I was worried about her and I love her .
This memory really sucks , but sometimes it can be really nice . Nice because now that my mom can barely talk and has a hard time distinguishing a coffee cup from a box of Kleenex , it ’ s weirdly comforting to remember her yelling at me . That was the last time she asserted herself as my mother , and that ’ s an important moment . And the horribleness of the memory is what makes it so easy to remember .
She also agreed to go to the doctor . Not happily , but she did . She said something like , I ’ ll go , but just know that you ’ re the only one who thinks I have any problems . And I said thank you , and pretended like it was a one-man job instead of a vast conspiracy . Still the family baby , but a little less than before .
— Conor Dougherty ’ 99 is a writer for The New York Times . His essay was originally published in 2015 on Medium . His mother , Kathleen , passed away from Alzheimer ’ s disease in 2018 .
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