Return of the mallards
A good weekend, overall. The ducks are back in the pool, and it’s taken them only a day to overcome their shyness and waddle up to the back door to take food from me. As usual, Mrs. Mallard took the initiative, while the mister hung back and quacked in the anxious but muted way that [...]
Dad’s ghost
My mother often forgets that my father died. She doesn’t claim to see or hear him, but she sometimes wonders when he’ll be getting home. My sister says that she often refers to me as “Dad.” I mentioned this to our case manager and wondered how I should respond–should I correct her or play along? [...]
My learning curve
I get angry at my mother sometimes because I still think that she has some control over this. I find myself believing that I can reason with her, instruct her, set her straight and make her snap out of it. Today was especially frustrating. I cannot accept her apparent apathy. If I make her feel [...]
What am I doing?
Is this okay to do? Write publicly about my mother’s difficulties? I’m doing it primarily for myself, in all honesty. Writing this gives the enormous, unwieldy, raggedy struggle some focus. Putting the broken bits back together at the end of the day helps me. I am forced to look for the poetry in this cruel [...]
Same as it ever was
On what seem to be good days, like today, I’ll be talking to my mother and think: Is this a dream? She can still act perfectly normal at times. But it’s not a dream, as I inevitably find out. I don’t really want to know this much about the invisible warp and weft of the [...]
Waves
My mother’s presence is like the signal from a faraway radio station on a cold winter night. Sometimes it’s so faint that you have to know where to look for it, jiggle the dial, bend the antenna; other times the atmosphere is just right, and she’s there–loud and clear. I spoke privately with her nurse-practioner [...]
The hardest part…?
Maybe the hardest part of taking care of a family member with dementia is negotiating her integrity and my sanity. The best plan for me will not necessarily be the best plan for my mother–at this time, at least. How I would love hearing her say, It’s time for me to move to assisted living. [...]
Where to begin…
My mother introduced herself to me last night. The day had been an awful one, for her, for me and for my sister. It seems as if her Alzheimer’s has worsened–as usual, in ways I never expected. She had called me at work, for the second time this week, complaining that she felt terrible. She [...]
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