This post is the conclusion to my last post about Mom. Our last Christmas with the remnants of our Mom was in 1997. We knew that it would be. We made our peace with that and tried to prepare for what was to come. The years 1998 and 1999 are a blur for me. Mother’s mental capacity and physical health rapidly declined. Two years of visits with doctors to discuss her physical problems. The blankness of her stare with an unintelligible babble or sound comprised our visits. I was a single mom starting my teaching career, and my sister, blessedly, attended to many of those…
Month: January 2019
Mom, Dementia, and Daughters
I have not written much about my Mom as she has been physically gone for almost nineteen years. She died when she was 74. She would have been 95 years old on January 30 this year. Losing Dad is still fresh, and writing has been a catharsis for me in handling my grief. Mom, though, and her circumstances, rendered a different kind of grief. My Mom had either Alzheimer’s (which we think) or vascular dementia (something about which I recently read). The phone rings at 4:03 in the morning. Sleep, uncertainty. Answer? Yes/No? Prank? Emergency? Respond. News. Nursing home. Hospital. Another step toward going home.…