Donor
Profile: Wills
Laddie Martin
Creating
a safe place to call home
Anastasia
Porayko is the only mother that Laddie Martin really
knew. After all, Laddie was just a baby, nine months
old, when her birth mother died, leaving behind five
little girls under the age of seven. Enter Anastasia,
the young Ukrainian woman who would marry Laddie's father
and raise the children through the Dirty '30s on a farm
just outside of Lloydminster, Alberta.
Says
Laddie, "We were homesteaders. Times were tough.
We often had no clothes, or very little, except what
neighbours gave us. It was not an easy life. Even though
we lacked a lot of the necessary things, we did not lack
security in our environment because when we came home,
mother or dad was always there."
 Laddie's
parents were still living on the farm when her father
died in 1965. After another 10 years on the farm, her
mother moved to a home that Laddie had found in the city
within walking distance of groceries and shopping. That
went well for another 10 years.
"But
then I started to worry about her," says Laddie. "I
would phone and she wouldn't answer, and I knew she was
there." Also, a neighbour had seen her mother fall
in the snow and not get up for a while. "I realized
I couldn't leave her by herself any more. That summer,
she came to live with me."
For
Laddie, the next year and a half are pretty much of a
blur. In addition to caring for her mother, she was working
full-time as a teacher/administrator in Calgary. "I
found myself running on sheer energy."
When
the time came for a move to a nursing home, Laddie found
a home where some of the residents spoke Ukrainian, so
that Anastasia would have people she could talk to. As
the disease progressed and her behaviour grew more erratic,
it became evident that the staff really didn't know how
to care for someone with dementia.
"I
don't blame them," says Laddie. "They didn't
have the facility or the knowledge. They didn't understand
what was happening to her. Other residents may have had
strokes or physical illness but their minds were all
right. Mother's mind was gone. They didn't understand."
Laddie
was heartbroken when her mother died in 1986, at 82. "I
just felt so guilty. I felt as though I hadn't been able
to help her."
For
a long time, Laddie knew she wanted to do something to
honour the woman who had always greeted her with a smile
even after she was unable to talk. Then it came to her.
She was already giving annually to the Alzheimer Society.
Why not make a bequest, as well? "Mother was very
good to me. I could maybe help someone else. That was
my way of keeping in contact with my mother's values."
Laddie
and her husband, Herbert, are members of the Circle of
Hope, a group of Canadians who are willing to let others
know that they have named the Alzheimer Society in their
will or made a provision for a future gift, through a
life insurance policy, charitable trust or gift annuity.
In
her own community, Laddie, now 74, also volunteers with
a women's organization that, among other projects, raises
funds to support specialized living environments for
people with Alzheimer's disease. It is her way of ensuring
that, now and into the future, people with dementia have
a safe place to call home.
[excerpted
from Spring 2002 Reflections, Alzheimer Society
of Canada]
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