My original title for this post was “dealing with dementia”, but after receiving a text from one of my brothers, yesterday, I changed it to this because that’s what our mother said to him as he was leaving on his weekly visit to her.

This is not my usual upbeat blog post, but it’s been a part of my life for the past few years and it’s why I’m now living in Washington state.  It’s also something that many people are going through now, so I thought it was appropriate to post.  If you know me or have read my blog, you’ll know that I drove out from my home in Colorado just over 3 years ago to spend some time with my mom so that we could find a suitable assisted living situation for her, due to her declining health and her Dementia.  We had home care set up for her a few hours a day for a few years, but that now wasn’t enough.  I thought that I could find a great place for my mom in a few weeks and everything would be fine – boy was I naive.  There are so many things to consider and thankfully I had a friend in the eldercare business who was able to guide us through this process.  If you’ve gone through this or are about to, there is a huge learning curve.  Visiting my mom for a few days or even a week wasn’t enough to see the decline, living with her for a few months was!!

There are so many things to consider when finding a suitable home for parents that have dementia because they need constant care.  After looking online and then in person at a number of options near my brothers, we finally decided on one and have been happy with that decision for the past 3 years.   I originally thought that maybe I could live with my mom and be her aid for a while, shopping and cooking and cleaning – but after a few weeks, I found myself exhausted and emotionally drained.  I give so much credit to those home care professionals who do this, although it’s probably easier when it’s not your immediate family.  I honestly never thought this would happen to us, that it only happened to other people, but that’s what I thought when my father died and I was only 15 years old.  You take what life gives you and make the best of things.

Not knowing much about Dementia, I starting researching – a lot.  Not every case is the same, but there are similarities.  While living with my mom for a few months (with my two dogs who were fantastic with her) I saw so many changes with her.  She couldn’t remember how to use her coffee maker, so she waited for me in the morning to do that.  She was hesitant to cook anything (that’s a good thing) so I made all of the meals for us.  She made fun of my “healthy crap” for dinner and then scraped the plate clean – lol.  She’s always been a huge fan of desserts but has ramped that up a lot recently.  Every night after dinner she would ask if I wanted a bowl of ice cream, as this is her new “go-to” dessert.  As things started to slide, this question came up again and again, right after she had finished a bowl and put it away in the dishwasher.  Long story short, I went up to my room to read one night after her ice cream and in the morning I found 5 empty bowls in the dishwasher and very little ice cream in the freezer.  At first, I thought that she was hiding them from me and then realized that she really didn’t remember eating ice cream, so she kept on going.  This would explain the weight gain.  Another fun activity she had while I lived there was doing the same load of laundry over and over – at 3 am in the morning!!   While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just plain annoying when the room I was sleeping in was across from the laundry area.

The more time I spent with my mom, the more I realized that she was quickly slipping away from us.  I suddenly felt terrible about not visiting enough over the past 10 years or so and wanted to help her in whatever way I could.  She was always there for me when I needed help and I needed to return the favor.  She actually helped me paint two of my houses over the years, while on “vacation” visiting me and really enjoyed it.  I always loved it when my mom came to see me and I loved showing her my surroundings and why I loved living there.  She never understood why I moved so far away from home after college and why I changed jobs every few years, but she came to understand that it didn’t matter, as long as I was happy and that made her happy.

While chatting with a friend recently who spent a lot of time at our house when we were kids, she brought up some fun memories of my mom.  My mother taught her (and me) how to sew, how to smash a head of iceberg lettuce in order to get the core out and most importantly, why everyone should lick the beaters when making cookie dough – these are all important lessons in life and I’m glad that my mom was a part of this.  This just reminded me that I need to focus on who she was and not who she is now.  She’s still here physically, but not mentally and I miss that part of my mom.

These are just a few of my favorite photos of my parents and me when I was young.  They made me who I am today and I’m thankful for that!!