Skin Deep (My Mom’s Alzheimer’s)
When my mom was a young woman, before and after I was born, she worked at a hotel on the beach in beautiful Ocho Rios, Jamaica. She was a Beach Bunny, a sort of cocktail waitress who served guests lounging on or around the beach. Her honey brown skin and brick house figure made her an icon in her own right. She used to tell me that her figure was so eye-catching that a Playboy magazine agent tried to sign her up for the magazine. I believe her because to this day my mom has an hour-glass figure.
In addition to the figure, mom has a natural sense of style and manages to make everything she wears look classy. Years past, our family would joke about the fact that we could go to mom’s house at 7 on a weekend morning, ring the doorbell and hear the crisp click of high heels on the hardwood floor as she approached the door. Even without plans to leave the house, we would always find her fully dressed from head to heels at the crack of dawn.
Throughout this journey my mother has never lost her sense of style, her figure or her beauty.
It is ironic then, that mom’s fashion sense is one of the first things Dementia attacked. She would dress herself three or four layers deep in plaids, stripes and florals all at once. At times she would put dress clothes beneath and on top of her pajamas, leaving me wanting to use the scissors to cut her free.
