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...
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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...
Today I awaken at 5, which is my normal schedule but hasn't been for months. I check for messages, and only recall having done it one other time in the night. It feels as if there's some space in my brain to evaluate the day, which seems a healthy sign. Getting to the care facility is still my predominant objective but I linger at home long enough to squeeze in my morning stretches. The parking lot is open to the public, its freshly painted gray surface emitting a hazy chemical smell that seems to go with me as I sign in the visitor log book, key the security code into the elevator, and ride up to the 2nd floor to (as my grandmother used to say) "see what's what." She's awake, working bent over her puzzle book, a different brightly colored blouse carefully buttoned and her shoes on. No pajamas are in sight. "Oh, hello there," she greets me in her typical dry manner, but the smile is real and her eyes are clear and remain fixed on me. These day...
Throughout the night I spontaneously pause sleep and check my phone for missed calls or messages. Even when there are none I lie wondering in the darkness. Is she awake, right now, and lucid enough to be confused? Is she panicked and overwhelmed and alone in the dark? Eventually I talk myself into acceptance of the unknown and drop back into uneasy sleep. In the morning I read her 2 a.m. text to my sister: "Can you turn off the nightlight, please? It's too bright for me." She's not at her daughter's house; she's in a long-term facility for a thirty day respite stay. Because we have been caregivers for the last seven months, my sister and I, and we need respite. res·pite noun a short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant. "the refugee encampments will provide some respite from the suffering" As quickly as I can I am out the door with a phone charger, more word-search puzzle books, protein drinks,...