Alzheimer's, Money and Mootha

I suppose Alzheimer's affects everyone differently, but in my Mom's case it brought out a few new character traits. At least, I assumed they were new. One of the key areas of interest and intrigue was money. Mom thought she was penniless, even though she was financially set for life.

This concern for money appeared early on, I would say, and it stayed with Mom, even intensifying, during years five through seven of her ten year battle with Alzheimer's. During Mom's last year, when she struggled to speak or find the right words, we heard the word 'money' now and again.

Money, for Mom, was a source of great concern and agitation during the Alzheimer's years. Thinking she had no money, she would become greatly agitated. How, for example, would she afford supper at the nursing home (which she may have seen as a restaurant??). She also became interested in those who might have had money, as you will see in today's 2012 video clip. I'm not sure if she was referring to Dad or to me when she asked Julian 'do you think he has any money?' It hardly matters to whom the comment was directed. It only mattered whether this person had  money or not.

In the pre-Alzheimer's days, I don't remember Mom having any particular fascination with money or the rich. She did refer to rich people as 'the mucky-mucks', always accompanied by a laugh, but I don't remember her reading Robb Report, People magazine, or the Forbes 100 Richest People issue.

To prove that money was an Alzheimer's related paranoia, we need to turn the clock back to the late 1940s or the early 1950s. The setting was Aberdeen, Scotland. My Dad was a penniless PhD student at the university in Aberdeen. My Mom worked in a bank as a teller.

A teller. That's telling. Maybe she was obsessed by money?

We could jump to that conclusion easily, except for the fact that she met my Dad at the bank because that's where he did his banking. Mom would have known that Dad was penniless, or 'penceless' as it would have been in Scotland, yet she went on a date with him anyway.

So much for not mixing business with pleasure! I suppose she probably wasn't going to meet him in church though, was she?

No, not likely. What I like best about this story is that I know my Mom didn't marry Dad for his money. It was simply love.