In the Middle of the End

With Alzheimer's there is what feels like a cataclysmic shift at each progression of the disease.  Then, a sort of rhythm of coping becomes an uneasy routine that settles into something that can be managed (as undesirable as the managing might be).  Poised between changes is the place I can simulate coping -- it's sort of a "better the devil you know than the one you don't".  And that seems an appropriate comparison since there certainly are devilish fingerprints all over this disease. Two and a half weeks after receiving notification of my mother's impending expulsion from A.L., "for her own safety and care", I must have lulled myself into thinking it wouldn't really happen, because the call came like a proverbial thunderbolt yesterday.  Two different facilities were recommended and I meticulously copied down the name of each, mechanically thanked the social worker for the information and interrupted her goodbye with a hasty appeal for my mother...

Traditional days become even more of an emotional juggling bout with each phase of life, but this year it seems all I do is push my emotions away.  It's Thanksgiving and I'm stuffing.  Literally.   Last night I dreamed my brother called me out from the pulpit at our mother's funeral.  He ranted that I abandoned her and shoved her into a nursing home so other people could deal with her because I never cared about her and I'm the reason she's dead.  I sat, ice cold, waiting for someone to stop him, but knowing it was all true.  True enough, anyway.   My mother needs one-on-one care, and Assisted Living doesn't provide that.  She's been that way for a while, but I was hoping we'd get by in a place where there is much bustle and traffic to keep her short term memory occupied.  She has won the "Perfect Attendance" award for morning and afternoon activities, never missing a game of Bingo, crafting session, or a sing-along.  But she's going int...

I place my mother's miniatures -- the ones she kept locked away -- on a low shelf of my bookcase.  It gives me so much satisfaction that I am interrupted by emotions.  Here, the porcelain St. Bernard mother and pup are eye level to a small person of five or so years, and I smile knowing they will most certainly be discovered by a favorite pair of little girls.   I treasure things in a very different way than my mother did.  Scattered around my life, my world, are the sentimental, sacred and fragile elements of my journey.  Beautiful old Irish linens get flung on outdoor tables, thirty-year old baby cups serve juice to young visitors, and I wear the pink and red zippered sweater that my grandmother made for my mother when I was just two years old.  I don't mind the thought that these particular little figurines will be most definitely touched, and picked up, and probably carried about -- possibly even lost or broken.  Because in the moment, they will de...

Days have fallen into an uncertain rhythm, a sameness.  I cram in a visit almost every day, and the two that I didn't make it prompted multiple text messages and calls from my mom, and once even from the nurses' station.  She's become fixed on the idea that she is moving, and industriously packs everything, including the wall clock.  When I thought to hinder the process by taking the tote bags with me, she stripped the bed and bundled all of her clothing along with playing cards, phone charger and a half-empty milk carton into a sheet.  All of this was piled onto a wheelchair she found in the hall so she could be ready to go. I start our time together with cheery conversation while I unpack and sort and restore order to this hospital room that she has been staying in for almost three weeks.  And I'm learning where to hunt for missing items.  Today I have no time constraints, so I settle into getting her mind back on track.  Whatever that means.  W...

It's been a week since this respite began and I decided to take the day off, although I keep saying it aloud as if someone will audibly correct me if I'm wrong.  Wrong.  It is a strange concept in a situation where nothing is right, and yet I keep tripping over it in my mind.  I wish someone would audibly tell me what to do -- God, for instance?  I'm the daughter who stated reasonably to my siblings that I would never have my mother stay with me.  She is too large of a person in her opinions and preferences for me to peacefully co-exist in her orbit.  I'm drowned out and edgy and itchy to run away.  It's unhealthy for me.  And yet, she has been living half the time in our home, my haven, because there is no other option.  She's been living here, with a disease that renders her incapable of good manners and observed boundaries.  Although I have my mind set on this sunny moment on the deck eating a late breakfast with my feet up and my hus...

Today is a tough day and there are a million potential reasons, but the biggest one is Alzheimer's.  Like a toddler without the ability to put pain and disappointment into the mitigating perspective of experience, each difficulty leads to despair.  I can't fix her brain, and so we are spending our time repeating the tears and tantrums. The weather is stormy, and I want to leave -- to get on my way home.  She wants me to take her with me but since I won't she wants me to take the card shuffler and I wonder if she'll break it if I refuse.  Yesterday we circled around the track of why I didn't bring it, how I could have forgotten, and if I would keep my promise to bring it today.  But "today" is just a construct; time is not a real thing.  And I have not accomplished anything in this visit. Here is the crux of the tension:  I am in the years of my life where I get things done; my mother has nothing to do.  She wants companionship and I want to check ...

It was too quick -- the decision to take this step.  And yet, it had been looming for a couple of weeks.  The  paperwork and processes and terminology and unreturned phone calls and emails by case workers created a quagmire that seemed endless, and I was the one to pull the rug out from under our careful/thoughtful transition.  "She can't come here to my house tomorrow," I told my sister on a 7 a.m. phone call.   During her previous two-week stay, my mom had used her walker as a battering ram in an attempt to get past the sweet retired nurse who came when neither my husband nor I could adjust our work schedules to be home with her.  Typically, Debbie and Mom spent their time together playing cards or working puzzles or just chatting, but Debbie's face as she asked me to walk her down to her car alerted me that something was amiss.  I heard how my mother was insisting she was leaving the house, getting picked up, and as proof she waved a tote bag clutch...