It's Come to This

This evening my dad told me that earlier today, when my mom was trying to tell him something about me, she referred to me as "the lady who lives up the hill."  It's not unexpected, of course, that she would forget my name, but it is sad.  And so the knife turns again...

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It seems that the days of leaving my mother alone are rapidly drawing to a close.

Although my dad is officially retired, he does occasionally put in a day of work in a nearby town; and previously, when he was gone from home for a few hours like that, Mother would stay down at her house and would be fine.  I would check in with her every so often, and Dad would call her from where he was working to see how she was doing.  But she was fine like that.

The past few times he's been gone, we've realized that she's not fine.  She doesn't know what to eat for lunch when he's gone--even if he calls and tells her what to eat--so I've started having her come up to my house to eat lunch together.  She seems to wander around rather aimlessly in their house--even if he gives her a suggestion of what she could do to fill her time--so now I find something to occupy her up here; sometimes that's carrying wood into our woodshed, or sometimes it's just sitting in a chair and watching one of my children do a program on the computer.  She gets delusional, thinking that other people are in her house--which of course would be quite alarming--so now we surround her with ourselves, with real people, in hopes that it will chase the phantoms away.

Several days ago my dad stayed here at my house with my youngest child who was napping, and I took the rest of my children to run some errands.  My mother was down at their house, but could not remember where Dad was and, consequently, got anxious and upset about it.  We realized that if he stays up here in the future to babysit for me, she needs to come along, too.

We're learning as we go.

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One of the heavinesses of soul that I carry these days is the thought that it's no longer fun to hang out with my mom; in fact, hanging out isn't really the correct term anymore, it seems.  Now it feels like babysitting.

As the Alzheimer's progression continues and she loses more abilities, I find myself running to catch-up emotionally with where she's at.  When I come to a point of peace with her status (including whatever loss of ability she might have just had), then I can find joy in this journey.  But honestly right now?  I'm not feeling much peace or joy--just a dull, weary resignation that this is my life, and this is my journey, and I don't like it.

But the crazy thing is that I know that in the future, I will look back at THIS stage and think, "Man, I had it good."