I lost my mother the other day.

Posted on January 25, 2013

I lost my mother the other day. I don’t really know how I feel about it.

My mom, Dorothy, was an active, independent woman, ahead of her time in many ways. In the mid-60s, she left the realm of full-time motherhood and started a career that lasted over 30 years. As an example, she skied until she was in her 70s. She loved to travel. She was an avid seamstress, making virtually all of her own clothes.

In order to make life easier for my dad, she made all of her own major purchases. She purchased her own cars over the years from her own earnings. When her father died, my mom and dad decided to bring my grandmother into our home to live with us because unlike my mom, my grandmother was completely and utterly dependent on my grandfather, and she needed someone to care for her. When my dad died 10 years ago, my mom was lost for a little bit – understandable, since they had been married for 54 years and had been inseparable for 4 years dating prior to that. After about 3 months, she began a new phase in her life. She joined the church sewing guild and other activities related to the church, but she stopped skiing. I just attributed it to being concerned about injury. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

She started having trouble balancing her checkbook, and became easily flustered and repetitive. These behaviors raised a red flag in my mind, so I talked her into letting me accompany her to an appointment with her doctor, and we had the doctor administer some cognitive tests, and sure enough, the doctor suggested that she was probably in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Shortly afterward, we found a very nice apartment for her about 2 miles away from where my wife and I live, so that we would be close at hand yet she would still have some level of independence. After a year and a half in this apartment, we knew that it was time for her to move in with us. Over the last couple of months by herself, every time I stopped by to see her (daily, sometimes twice a day), she was in bed. She stopped preparing meals for herself, and the only time she would eat anything would be when I stopped by and made something for her. The minute I would leave to go home, she would simply crawl back into bed.
Her disease began to progress rapidly. The doctor had initially diagnosed Alzheimer’s, but after a while he felt that she had a more severe type of dementia – Lewy Body Dementia. Dementia with Lewy Bodies is rare, affecting only about 7% of people suffering from dementia (including Alzheimer’s), and the symptoms are very similar to Alzheimer’s. The progression is much quicker than that of Alzheimer’s.

Mom, by this time had become really difficult to handle – episodes of wandering down the street in her nightgown, abusive and hurtful interchanges and episodes of hallucinations and delusions. Her sleeping habits kept us from getting any sleep, she wandered inside the house incessantly, we were constantly worried she would hurt herself with the stove, or knives from the kitchen. We actually gated the kitchen for a while, until mom kicked down the gate and tore it from the hinges. We decided that it was time that she move into a nursing home that specialized in caring for Alzheimer’s patients.
That was two years ago. Her symptoms accelerated further. She became listless and uncommunicative, and was confined to a wheelchair. But the depressing nature of her condition started to wear me down. Times between visits became extended, because it took all of my strength to screw up enough courage to walk through those doors and see my mom.

In my mind, though, it wasn’t really my mom. After about a year in the home, there was absolutely no recognition in her eyes, and she didn’t even acknowledge my presence. It was heartbreaking to visit her in this state, and I’ve even read where doctors feel that sometimes family visits with Alzheimer’s patients actually agitate the patient. I never saw that – all I saw was this woman who had been so vital, so independent, so vibrant, sitting in a wheelchair looking off into space with a blank stare on her face.

The day before yesterday, the nursing home called and told me that she was dying. My brother spent the last day with her and was with her when she died because I was with my wife in Florida dealing with her mother’s estate. I couldn’t get back home to say goodbye, and that’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

However, as upsetting as it is to lose my mom, not to be able to touch her, to hug her, kiss her forehead and tell her some new tidbit from my life, I’m actually relieved. She’s at peace now, released from the prison that her body had become, and I know somewhere she’s in my dad’s arms, reunited almost 10 years to the day that they were parted.

Mom, I’m going to miss you terribly, but I know that you’re better off where you are now. I always felt so helpless because I knew where your disease would take you, and I knew I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Rest easy, Mom – give Dad a hug from me.

To learn more about Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias, please visit:   www.alz.org

Categories: Mind, Body, and Spirit