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December 11, 2009

Lee Ward: 12/13/09 — The case of the missing biscuit

Anonymous The Daily Independent Fri Dec 11, 2009, 12:40 PM EST

When someone in the family has Alzheimer’s disease, it’s OK to find humor in the situation. It might seem cruel to laugh at times, but it’s the only way to cope with it.

My aunt who died three years ago had Alzheimer’s and some of the things she said and did provided laughter for the family and the caregivers.

Even though it’s not a bit funny that my mother is now showing the same signs of Alzheimer’s that my aunt showed, my dad and I are finding a few things amusing about her behavoir.

The most recent incident is the case of the disappearing biscuit.

I was at my parents’ house during Thanksgiving weekend. One morning I took six biscuits out of the freezer and put them into the oven. When they were about halfway done, I realized there were only two sausage patties. I cooked them for dad, who was still in bed, and decided to go out and get my mother and me breakfast at a fast-food restaurant.

When I got home, I handed Mom a bag and said, “Here’s your biscuit.” I put my pancakes on the dining room table, took my coat to the other room and returned to sit down for breakfast. Mom sat down at the table without a biscuit.

“Where’s your biscuit?” I asked.

“What biscuit?”

“The biscuit I just gave you. In a bag. Where is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. She didn’t. There was no bag — or biscuit — in her hand or on the table.

I looked through the den, the dining room and the kitchen, and there was no biscuit.

“Don’t you remember me handing you a bag with a biscuit in it?” I asked. She did not.

By this time, Dad, retired chief of police, was up, wanting to know what was going on. I explained the situation and we continued looking for the biscuit. He kicked into investigative mode.

“Maybe the dog got it,” he suggested.

“No, if she’d gotten it, the bag would be ripped up and strewn all over the room,” I reasoned.

“Did she already eat it?”

“No way,” I said. “She just had it 30 seconds before I asked her about it.”

We searched and searched, but no biscuit. Dad went through the interrogation process again, but it yielded no new evidence. “Usually, when something’s missing, I find it under the bed,” he said, heading for the bedroom.

But the biscuit wasn’t under the bed. We went around the rooms we believe she was in and still couldn’t find it.

Dad shared his biscuits with Mom and later, we looked around again for the bag, but to no avail.

When I left for my house later that day, the biscuit still was nowhere to be found. I called when I got home, but Dad still hadn’t found it. “We’ll find it eventually,” he said.

“Yeah, where it starts to smell,” I said. We had a good laugh.

LEE WARD can be reached at lward@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2661.

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