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 clutched in her hand that was stuffed with all the supplies her brain knew to pack: kitchen spoons, a candle, and two random sweatshirts from the hall closet. Reasoning, distracting, and pleading in my name were ineffective and Debbie ultimately found herself between my mother and the front door.
The conclusion that she couldn't continue as part-time caregiver didn't surprise me, and the account didn't really either. Sometimes there are long stretches where the disease is much larger than my mother, and hostility and aggression crowd out all else. Usually, we maintain the fragile ecosystem that placates her fears/her "triggers" as the experts say -- but the inevitable disruption is always hovering on the periphery, threatening to blow all calm to smithereens. We've learned, at that point, to head outside to do weeding or upstairs to fold laundry or down to the basement to watch a game. Because Alzheimer's has left our brilliant mother with a 5-10 minute memory. She'll ask for dinner just moments after we've finished washing up, but she will also forget to fight if no one is around to engage. Her wanting to leave the house is a recent, recurring theme, and it is too dangerous.
So, here I sit on my sister's front porch, waiting for a call back from the Director of Admissions of the third facility that provides an option for Respite Care. It's a beautiful day, with a warm breeze lifting the leaves of the potted plants lining the steps and spinning the iron garden ornament in a lazy, hypnotic way.
"I wonder what's over there," my mother says to me.
"Where?"
"There, behind that fence next to the driveway. They always keep that shut so I can't see, but I want to go look. I think I've wanted to go look all of my life but they never let me." She pauses. "You won't take me, will you?"
"Take you to the neighbor's backyard?"
"Yes, but it isn't a yard, you know. It's a bigger place. It's where I've been wanting to go. Everyone is there waiting for me. And we all live together there, like... I don't know what it's called. We're all in one place, but we're next to each other. Anyway, I would like to go there."
A message on my phone alerts me that Barbara has all of the paperwork together and a room ready and I can bring my mom today, or tomorrow morning if it's too late now. I look at my companion, staring fixedly across the street with a determined set to her face. I text Barbara that we will be there in a half hour or so, and turn to my mother.
"Do you want to take a ride in the car and go look at a place where you might want to stay with neighbors in the rooms next to yours and people you can see by just walking out into the hall?"
It feels shabby and deceitful and treasonous to offer it up like that on this sunny, companionable afternoon, and I hold my breath as my stomach churns.
"Right now? You would take me?"
I nod.
"That sounds nice. Okay."
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