Mom Is Alive, But No Longer With Us

[.ghoti.]

Thank you everyone for your kind replies and for having the courage to share your own heartfelt familial experiences.

They are more mending than you might imagine. I also want to say that the compassion expressed in this forum goes far beyond this thread. 

It gives the members of Bass Resource a better understanding of the solid support system that exists here. 

Glenn at the helm of this enormous vessel should not be taken lightly, because he can steer his ship in the direction of his choosing. 

 

Roger

Amen, brother

[jbw252]

Nice post Rolo.  After reading the responses, I felt compelled to chime in.  My Mom passed away in Sept. 2012, after the five year steady decline that Alzheimer's causes.  She went through the forgetfulness, the frightening realization that Alzheimer's was consuming her, two broken hips, and withered away into that catatonic state.  Wherever she was in her mind, it wasn't a happy place.  Alzheimer's is a horrifying disease.  My thoughts are with you & your family.  Stay strong & remember the good times.

 

~Joe~

[ww2farmer]

I am sorry to hear this. I do not have any words of wisdom for you, because I am going through the same thing with my granfather. He had a stroke in Nov. of 2012, and since then he has not been the same.

[Lund Explorer]

Gary, I'm sorry to hear about your recent loss.  His struggles are beyond him now, and I hope that all of you will be able to remember and celebrate the happier days in his life.

 

Roger, thank you once again for starting a discussion on this subject.  I can see by some of the others posting, that none of us are alone in having to deal with this dilemma.  We may all be facing this disease at different levels today, but we will all end up at the same place in the end.  Until they find a cure for this, the best any of us can hope for is continued support, and the sharing of what we learn along the way.  Unfortunately, there are going to be many more of us facing this in the future.  With that in mind, I'd like to share a little of what has been going on up here.

 

My story starts way back in 1974 when my paternal grandmother was fighting a form of dementia before the word Alzheimer's was used.  I can still remember the day I visited her before going into the Air Force.  We had talked for several hours when she said to me "You're a nice young man, who are you?".  That really struck home!  For years after, I listened to stories my mother told me about how much Grandma hated that nursing home and how she never wanted to go through that herself.

 

When Jackie and I got home from the 2011 BR road trip, we already knew that Mom was going to need ever increasing care.  We had started with weekly visits several years before, and the visits had been increasing to daily by the time we had left for that vacation.  By October of 2011, I knew that she couldn't be left at home alone any longer, and she knew it as well.  When I would visit her, she kept making the same comment of "put me in a home and forget me".  When Jackie would go there by herself, the comment changed to "Mr. Jensen wants to put me in a home, and I don't want to go!".  What's left for a son to do?

 

At that time, I made a promise that I would keep her in her home until the day came where she didn't know where she was or who was staying there with her.  We had to do lots of repairs and modifications to the home she lived in since 1961, and many of those project were done on weekends when she would "go to visit" with Jackie at our home in Rodney.  Can you imagine gutting an entire bathroom down to the studs and rebuilding a handicap accessible one it two days?  It wasn't fun.  We put on a whole new roof on in three days.  All new windows in two, and siding the next weekend after that.  Every interior project entailed replacing old with new in somewhat the same colors and hanging every picture or knick-knack in the same place it had been for years.

 

It's been over two years now, but Mom stills knows that she is in the home she has lived in for over 50 years.  There are some bad days, but the good ones still outnumber the bad ones.  She spent a month last winter living back in Norfolk VA where my Dad had served in the Navy during the Korean War, but she came home again.  There's been a few times when Jackie will get there after work and is told that us boys should be home from school anytime now, even when I'm just in the other room.  We've found it is easier to just agree with her than correct her. 

 

One final thing is that I started writing a daily journal after we moved in.  I've gone back for the years previous to the move as I remember events that took place, and tried to mark every occasion since.  I'd like to think that maybe some writer much better than I am may see a book in all my rambling.  Perhaps it could be used as a learning experience for those people who are going to face this problem in the future.  I'm seriously thinking of titling it: How Old Is That Dog?  It's a question I hear at least 20 times a day.