Alzheimer’s: Caught Between Two Worlds
Vairea Houston

I watched as the perfect pink rose I had set on my grandmother’s casket was lowered into the ground. Beautiful and serene like her that rose would remain within the ground. I don’t think you can register that someone you love has passed until it’s staring you in the face. I began to sob on the shoulder of my Uncle, who put his arm around me in comfort. But there is no comfort in death, so I accepted his shoulder to shield me from my own grief. My estranged family all stood in a half moon around the burial plot while the hearse driver stayed unusually close behind, with his arms crossed. We all stood about five feet from each other, uncomfortable. Five days after her death, Oma (Dutch for grandmother) was here in Bainbridge Island, being buried in the plot her friend had given her. The day was bright but a breeze kept me wrapping a shawl around my arms, it seemed understandable that the day would keep its chill. It had hit me that I would never hear her tell a story again, or hold her hand as we wheeled her around when the sun came out to play. I hoped that she saw me from up above, and recognized me one last time.
Katrina Rutunuwu was born in 1921 in Sumatra, Indonesia to her Indonesian parents Martinez and Katerina Rutunuwu. Her father was in the Dutch army so they often moved around throughout what was then the Dutch East Indies. After Katrina was born they moved from Sumatra to Jakarta. She was one of fourteen children. One of her earliest memories is her family’s trip to her grandparents farm in Sulawesi when she was eight years old. She recalls her grandparents waking her up at 5 am to go their fields for food. An old wagon pulled them along through the fields, led by a Caribou. You can hear the fondness of Oma’s memory as she describes the excitement all her siblings felt when told they would be traveling in a wagon for the first time. She was told to wash up in the stream before they ate. She washed her face in a cold, clear stream that ran from the mountains down through their property. It was then that Oma ate her first pineapple on that field in Sulawesi, “It was so sweet and delicious” she said. It was five days of firsts for the children visiting their grandparents. They spent nights in a tree house while her grandma would build fires down below them to keep the wild boars from eating their crops. In the morning they would wake up to fresh rice from the fields, it was sweet and green. Her grandparents would make bbq corn, sugar cane for dessert, and make a drink out of a nearby tree that produced sweet and sour liquid. It was stories like this that my grandma would tell me when I was little, they were always so bright and vivid like you were watching them through a magnifying glass.
On December 12th, 2008 Oma was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. It was then that we saw her change. She began to tell the same stories repeatedly, from forgetting where she put her jewelry, to forgetting where she was. She couldn’t live on her own anymore, in case of emergencies we weren’t able to watch her 24/7. So she moved from her apartment in Bainbridge Island to Crista senior living in Silverdale, Washington. It was a small distance from Bainbridge Island but a huge difference in her lifestyle. She was limited to the amount of things she could bring with her, she wasn’t allowed jewelry, and only had a dresser in her room. She had to live with other ladies and had strict breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours to adhere to. Trips anywhere had to be done with family or on designated days with other seniors. There were days we picked her up that she asked us not to take her back, so we’d have her sleep over for a night or two. It was days like those that were painful to see. Watching my mom walk her to her room and kiss her goodbye, I saw Oma’s fear of being alone. I could sympathize with her simply from when my mom left me in kindergarten for the first few times. Leaving you in a room full of strangers around your same age, who you have no personal affiliation towards. I could tell that my mom felt so guilty leaving her there, she had switched from being the daughter to being the mother.
I progressively saw her Alzheimer’s advance within her stay at Crista. She had a harder time distinguishing our names, she accused her family members of stealing her things, and felt threatened by her neighbors and old friends. She began roaming the hallways at night, and forgetting where she was. She became beyond the services of a senior living home and needed to be in an assisted living to be completely taken care of. She was moved to Crista Shores Assisted Living in Seattle, Washington. This was where Oma spent over five years of her life and are the most vivid in my memory. The entrance gives off a warm embracing feeling that I remember mostly during the first winter she lived there. A fireplace greets you, surrounded by leather sofas, and tables offering snacks and refreshments. You receive a name tag that sticks onto your clothing. This living home consists of many hallways, all named after different types of trees. Oma was located in Dogwood, and all separate wings were locked with passcodes so seniors wouldn’t get lost. It was the rooms there that gave me the chills. They were all covered in white blank walls, hospital looking beds that were easily adjusted and very sparse decorations. Outside each room was a plaque describing the person living there, how old they were, and where they called home. She called herself Cathy here in America instead of Katrina. At the entrance to Dogwood, a sign-in book held the signatures of those that visited and the day they came. In the first few months it had only been me, Leilani (my mother), Uncle Rio, and his wife Rita who visited her. Oma’s stages of Alzheimer’s had aggressively taken over, but it seemed like only a few days ago that we found out about her disease. Other seniors wandered the hallway of Dogwood in different stages then Oma. Some were able to hold a conversation, and politely began to chat every time we visited. Other’s sat immobile in their wheelchair, watching television or just staring off. Oma spoke four languages: Indonesian, Malaysian, Japanese, and English and started to actually mix these languages together once she got sick. She became harder to understand and lost the ability to hold conversation with us.
Being around someone with Alzheimer’s means handling with their mood swings, and not looking for their recognition for your continued patience. You see a new form of this person you once knew, and so my Oma’s journey through Alzheimer’s isn’t only influenced by my observations but watching my mom see her mother differently. The absolute calmness that I saw within my mother towards Oma but also the pain of seeing someone slowly forgetting you. Oma was born into a family of fourteen children, but her memory and she could easily name every single one of them up into her eighties. When my aunt Arisa asked her, “How do you not forget some of them?” Oma replied with, “How could I forget.” And that is one of the hardest things to watch when observing someone with dementia. Memories she thought she would never forget or suddenly harder to find within the deep recesses of our minds. Oma had so many stories to share, her life was filled with love, oppression, prejudice, culture, and independence.
Katrina experienced oppression when the Japanese took control of Java on March 9th, 1942. Japanese officers began taking families from their homes and putting them in internment camps to keep the Europeans from interfering with their domination. Several hundred of these internment camps existed across the East Indies and other Pacific Islands in their control. Over 300,000 people were forced to live in them. Her dad was in the Dutch army so they were immediately placed in an internment camp in Jakarta. It was here that Oma learned Japanese. The conditions that she lived during her teen years here marked her memories throughout her life. She first experienced prejudice here in what was her homeland then taken from her by the Japanese. Every Dutch citizen was stripped of all but bare necessities and taken to prison camps. Men and women were separated from each other and placed with strangers. There were schedules and regulations in the camps, times to wake up and times to go to sleep. Jobs were administered to everyone– anything from making dinner to cleaning the soldiers’ houses. Guards were constantly around, coming in and out of homes in the camp. People were constantly fearful of the guards and making them upset could come from not understanding what they said to you in Japanese. This is one of the reasons my grandmother learned the Japanese language.