Author’s Note: The other day I came across a dozen “drafted” posts that I’d written on the fly over the past few years (this one from late April, 2018), and I decided to finish them up and send them out into cyberspace for your enjoyment. So if they seem a bit … I think the word I’m looking for is “anachronistic,” you’re right! But sometimes the Life Less Traveled takes a detour, and that, too, has made all the difference.
To say that my life has changed drastically in the past six months since my mother has joined our household would be putting it mildly. Adding an elderly dementia patient to a house like ours, with two work-from-home parents and two special-needs teens and a couple of VERY spoiled dogs (one of whom cannot sleep at night unless her butt is planted firmly in my armpit) has been a real eye opener.
But it’s also had some real bright spots. And that is the truth. Not just the “You’ll be so glad that you had this time with her when she dies” variety. Though there is that. But there are other perks as well.
I’ve discovered love is a funny thing. The same fashion-forward teen who can’t look in my direction without a snarky comment about my appearance will ooh and aah over her “Mammie’s” new hairdo. It lets me see a kindler, gentler side of her I’ve been missing.
Another member of the household (who shall remain nameless) who emerges from his room (oops) only for Doritos refills will make his way to her little apartment in the basement, just to make sure she is up from her nap in time for dinner.
What I’ve loved most, though, is that having mom with us has given me a fresh appreciation for my mother’s gift for friendship. Her church friends in Georgia haven’t written her off since she’s crossed the Mason-Dixon line to go live in the frozen winterland of northern Indiana. Even though she doesn’t write, doesn’t call, doesn’t send cookies anymore … they continue to love on her in every way possible: on the special Facebook group I’ve set up for her, where we’ve heard from people from my childhood who had passed out of my world years ago. In cards and notes and care packages. And yes, through the occasional phone call on my cell that makes my mother’s face light up when she hears a familiar voice on the other end.
It makes me wonder who will still be calling me thirty or forty years from now … How about you?
At six this morning, I heard it: the whirr of my mother’s chair lift coming up from the basement. She was fully dressed, and had her bags packed, which means she must have been up since at least three.
“You told me to bring the fan up here,” she insisted. “I heard you.”
This week I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how family roles and dynamics change — and don’t change all that much — once dementia enters the picture. Navigating those changes takes a lot of energy, willpower, and … well, sensitivity. And to be honest, that last one does not come easy to me. I’m the kind of person who can organize and execute (pardon the word) complex events and projects. When it hits the fan, I can come up with a Plan B, C, and D quickly and without a lot of fuss.
This week my mother and I flew to Seattle to visit my sister Chris. It was the first time in the Pacific Northwest for the both of us, and we both had bucket list items to check off: My mother wanted to see a whale, or the coast of Alaska; I dreamed of having tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria.
Just when we had turned a corner,
Life on the Road Less Traveled 