![]() ![]() She wasn’t really ready for an Alzheimer’s place because that also cost a lot of money because they considered her a flight risk so everything had to be on lockdown. But the problem was finding a place for my mother because she wasn’t a New York resident and we didn’t know where she was going to be. So after the cops left, I decided that I should take Peter seriously when he said to get my mom and her Alzheimer’s out of the house so he could get some work done and have some peace. I was like, “Yeah.” Yeah, I was going to drink. Maybe you should call a support hotline.”Īnd she said, “Maybe, you know, you shouldn’t drink. She looked at me and I felt like the most irresponsible parent ever, like just such trash. She asked me what was going on and I explained it all to her. ![]() They separated us and the male cop took Peter over to the fence of the garden and I got escorted into the female cop’s car. Peter was yelling at me there by the whatever flowers were blooming and I was crying. So we went out onto the street and we went in front of the community garden. He started yelling at me and my mother was, “This is about me, isn’t it? You’re fighting because of me, aren’t you?”Īnd I told Peter if he wanted to yell at me he would have to yell at me outside because it was upsetting my mother. So I got back late and Peter was furious. Because, if your mother has Alzheimer’s, you're going to want to drink. Then I had another drink, then I had another drink. ![]() So one night I stayed late at the restaurant and I had a drink. So I can imagine being in an imaginary world. Then I would go back to my bed and I would imagine what it would be like to be her and everything is so confusing and crazy and then I would drive myself crazy and then I just quit acting, because the real world was a little more important right then. And then she’d come back and it went on all night long. So I would go back with her and I'd lay in bed with her and I would answer her questions over and over until she went to sleep. So we put a little latch on the door but then it was like having Jacob Marley and his chains, Scrooge’s dead partner, trying to tell you something. This would happen like several times a night and Peter was just like, “Whoa. It was really creepy and Peter was really creeped out about it, so I'd have to get up and walk her back to her room. She just was obsessed with our bedroom door and she would, in the middle of the night, open the door and then stand there expressionless and silent. She didn’t open any other door and this apartment had lots of closets. She did have this one weird thing where she was obsessed with our bedroom. She wasn’t a big… like we weren’t scared that she was going to run away, which is what everybody is scared about when somebody has Alzheimer’s. Then she would ask, “Erica,” very seriously, “do you have any chocolate?” I didn’t.īut this went on like all day long, all day long and all night. She just would ask the same questions all day long, like, “When am I going home?” And, “What day is it?” And, “What day is it?” And, “What day is it?” My mother was really, really sweet and really, really loving, and she didn’t have the usual Alzheimer’s changes like being, all of a sudden, really angry, having a complete personality change and being really agitated and aggressive and searching for things in the drawers and rattling things around. He didn’t have to cook for her or clean up after her or walk her, bathe her, help her with her dressing or anything like that. The deal was that Peter was not responsible for her. So I plucked my mother out of Connecticut and I dropped her into our Carroll Gardens, Italian-American, forget-about-it neighborhood. ![]() This is wonderful.” He was super supportive and he was great with the move. My fiancé, Peter, thought, “Yeah, this is a great idea. She couldn’t live alone anymore so my sisters and I thought it was best she live with me because I was managing her care and because basically my sisters had a lot of crap going on in their life and I got… I was the one. And two months after we moved in, I moved my divorced psychotherapist mother, who had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, in with us. We had just gotten this amazing, beautiful, sunny, huge apartment in Brooklyn. A bunch of years ago, my fiancé, Peter, and I, who were actors at the time, we were working in restaurants. ![]()
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