Seeing ‘Where is Wendy Williams?’ Stirs Memories of Mama And Questions: Where Are Her Protectors?
Mama was always a proud Black woman. Alzheimer’s gnawed at her pride and soul. We could not prevent it from taking its toll. But we could protect her from the outside world.
By John W. Fountain
WE TOOK FEW PICTURES of Mama after Alzheimer’s seized her brain, left her with a faraway gaze that filled her brown eyes whenever she was lost inside herself or confused. We wanted her to still feel dignified, even though her frustration over the loss of memories or her inability to care for herself or do the simple things, like taking a walk by herself, sometimes caused her to melt into tears.
Mama was always a proud Black woman. Alzheimer’s gnawed at her pride and soul. We could not prevent it from taking its toll. But we could protect her from the outside world.
We were her protectors—my brother and sisters. Perhaps none was fiercer or more diligent than me whom Mama had told before the disease took control, “I trust you more than anyone else in this world. You are the best man I have ever known. I trust you with my life.”
I assured Mama that she could trust me and that I would handle her affairs, her final arrangements and everything else—exactly the way she had instructed, even if it meant having to cuss somebody out, or more.
“I know, John,” she had responded with a chuckle years ago as we sat at my kitchen table preparing for the worse, for the inevitable.
By the time cancer and Alzheimer’s finally took mama away that summer afternoon on Aug. 22, 2014, I had exhausted every possibility and gone to every thinkable measure to try and shield her from the outside world: from insensitive or shoddy healthcare workers to bad healthcare facilities to predators and vultures of all varieties, to any and everything I thought might cause Mama hurt, harm or shame.
It was a charge I vowed to myself to uphold until I had carried my mother safely to her final place of rest—with the same love and care with which she had carried me to life…
That is the least we can do for loved ones, in my humble opinion, when a disease like Alzheimer’s or dementia or some other fatal, debilitating, deadly illness strikes.
Caring for and protecting loved ones is an unenviable and often heavy task not for the faint at heart. For it can mean having to show even relatives the way to the door when what they say or do—or simply their presence—offends or triggers.
It is a labor of love to protect our mothers and fathers or others when they no longer can protect themselves. To be their voice. Their console. Their help. To not intentionally hurt or harm them. To be patient, loving, kind, selfless.
We took few pictures of Mama during her Illness so that we could remember her the way she was in life before Alzheimer’s, but also because we knew she wouldn’t want people to see her like that, to stare at her, make fun of her, or pity her. We surrounded her in every way we could to keep her from harm. To not allow her to be taken advantage of, to protect her dignity.
Admittedly I was unprepared (although I found the Alzheimer’s Association to be an invaluable resource) for the level of intensity of my mother’s suffering. For how much she would need me. For the loss of her ability to do even the simplest of things like control her bodily functions even in public, or her emotions—especially when she was sundowning—or her propensity towards wandering.
Or Mama’s sudden memory loss sometimes of the simplest things and facts like forgetting once even the man she had been married to for more than 40 years. In the middle of the night over the phone with me, she whispered that she had been kidnapped. She had not, I said, explaining calmly and deliberately that I been present at age 6 when they tied the knot at Grandmother and Grandpa’s house.
“God knew that one day you would need a witness,” I said, laughing, partly as a strategy to lighten the mood. “That’s not a strange man, Ma. That’s your husband.”
“I couldn’t be married to him,” she said, chuckling finally. “Well-l-l-l, I guess you’re right.”
We laughed.
Recently, while watching “Where is Wendy Williams?” a four-part documentary series on Lifetime, I wanted to cry.
Williams, 59, a former talk-show host and celebrity gossip queen, “has been diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, her care team announced,” as reported by the Washington Post and widely reported by other media outlets.
“Frontotemporal dementia is caused by a group of disorders that gradually damage the brain’s frontal and temporal lobes,” which can cause changes in thinking and behaviors. “Symptoms can include unusual behaviors, emotional problems, trouble communicating, challenges with work, and difficulty with walking,” according to Alzheimers.gov, a federal government portal to information and resources on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Aphasia, according to Mayo Clinc, “is a disorder that affects how you communicate. It can impact your speech, as well as the way you write and understand both spoken and written language.”
I could only watch episode one of the Lifetime documentary on Williams. I only chose to do that against my better judgement and after seeing a promotional clip in which I noticed an all too familiar empty gaze in Williams’ eyes, and wondered aloud how anyone who loved her could allow her cameras into the intimacy of her life at a point in her life when she is clearly battling an illness that leaves her vulnerable in so many ways.
As I watched, I kept wondering where were her protectors that this so-called documentary could be made at all. For this much was clear in scene after scene, in blank stare after blank stare, in those moments when Williams was overwhelmed by emotion and dissolved into tears: That she is not well. Ray Charles could see that. Can’t her “protectors”? Can’t the producers?
I don't know which was worse: The vultures behind the camera or the ones in front of it. It was simply sad.
Whatever feathers Williams may have ruffled as a celebrity gossip queen, whatever her sins against those who may deem that her turn of fate may be comeuppance, I could only think of Mama. That Williams deserves as a human being the dignity of privacy and respect.
And that a good and loving son—or someone, anyone—to protect her now that she can apparently no longer protect herself would work better than good medicine.
It was a charge I vowed to myself to uphold until I had carried my mother safely to her final place of rest…
That August Saturday 10 years ago, after everyone else had gone, I stood nearby as cemetery workers lowered Mama’s casket into a grave I had picked out near two towering emerald Evergreens because Mama always loved Christmas. I shoveled a little dirt, then knelt alone and whispered with tears streaming down my face: “You’re safe now, Mama. I did what you told me to do. I love you, Ma. You’re safe.”
#PrayersforWendyWillliams
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
A Mama’s Boy’s Praise For All Black Mothers
This story was originally written by the author in 2018.
By John W. Fountain
LORD, HELP ME TO carry my mother... Give me strength to do what I need...
The diagnosis was Alzheimer’s for his mother, the prognosis eventual death twice over: One in mind, the other in mortal being until finally consumption whole by the invisible beast that had invaded his mother’s brain.
That’s what the research and experts told the son. He swallowed hard, tears washing over memories of better, brighter days. The prognosis frightened them both. But he had to be strong for Mama, could not allow her to see his tears, fears, pain…
Pain over the prospect of having to watch—powerless to alter the inevitable course—as the beast drug her into the suffocating prison of a fizzling mind with ever increasing blank spots on the screen of a life spent in living color.
Lord give me strength… And time…
Time to make more memories. Time for mother and son to unravel the hurts and misunderstandings that occur even between the best of mothers and sons. Time to share words not yet spoken. Time to live. Laugh. Love.
Time and strength ebbed and flowed as he carried her to doctor's appointments, lifted her from wheelchairs and hospital beds--as the beast locked her behind a watery haze that filled her brown eyes with a faraway stare.
He brought his mother red roses and flower bouquets—scents of sweetness and life to inhale. He played old Motown music and blues to soothe her soul. The son’s love potion sometimes broke the beast’s spell.
And son and mother then would sometimes dance and sing, like they did when he was a little ghetto boy and she was a young ghetto mother, dreaming of raising a better man than the one who had deserted them.
Sometimes, when the beast was raging, the son serenaded his mother a capella with old church songs. Or he prayed while holding his mother’s hand at night until she drifted off to sleep.
Lord, help me take care of Mama...
In her conscious hours, he reassured her. Comforted her in those times when even the most monumental things eluded the pages of her memory, like butterflies flickering in the wind. He learned not to rebut her insistence on the details on certain matters or memories—allowing her to be right when she was “wrong”.
And when she cried during moments of crystal clarity over the beast’s devouring—over it eating away at her physical abilities and dignity—the son dabbed his mother's tears, or kissed and caressed her hand or forehead. Or he simply lifted in his arms the woman who had given him life, blood and breath, and whispered, “I love you.”
“Mama, I got you,” he said, his heart breaking with every beat.
Lord, give me strength...
The son arrived at the nursing home to find his mother wandering on another wing. Her head, by now, hung toward her chest in an almost sheepish shame (the work of the beast), her eyes foggy, fixated on the floor.
“Ma’,” the son called out.
Slowly, she began lifting her head but managed only halfway, staring up at an angle. The son lifted her head with a gentle finger beneath his mother's chin.
“Johhhnnn,” she said, half singing, beginning to cry as their eyes met. “I thought you would forget about me.”
He hadn’t. It was the beast again. The son wrapped his arms around his mother.
“Mama, I could never forget about you,” the son said.
Not then. Not nine years since being granted the strength to lay his mother to rest. And not on Mother’s Day. Not ever.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com