Flurry of Activity
So much has happened in the past few weeks and I'm taking a moment to decompress. Reflection will come later.
Mom is now in a dementia care facility. A really good one. The staff is wonderful, the fellow residents are sweet. Everyone is treated with dignity and respect. Also with compassion and love. I'll tell you about the journey to get her there in an upcoming post.
Right now I'm feeling a bit politically incorrect, punchy and tired. I have the most awesome sister in the world! She keeps me sane. We've been cleaning out...drawers, cabinets, dressers, whole rooms full of a life well lived....AND A LOT OF CRAZINESS OMG! What I've found almost defies description.
Mom had become really agitated and restless in the last month or so; wanting to go home and packing the seemingly thousands of tote bags she has with all her necessities. Her home was not the home she wanted to go to - it was our home in northeast Detroit that we left in 1976. A time when her husband was on his way home from work, her kids were too young to be left alone for long, and her best friend lived four doors down. Her decision making is affected by the disease and what she packed is a unique potpouri of items.
Two sandals, not matched
3 balls of yarn - perhaps spaghettied around the handles
2 skeins of yarn
magazines
large tube of toothpaste top optional
financial paperwork out of context
jewelry
pens
tissue
one of what has to be ten pairs of glasses (she never throws the old ones out or even donates them)
nail files
anything else she can get her hands on.
And as the Sundowners took root for the night she grew more insistent that she had to get back to her house, anxious that things were not right if she were not there. She became different shades of inconsolable from crying to stubborn. I simply let her continue to pack, keeping her in the house with half hearted lies of going home tomorrow afternoon, trying to get her to go to sleep.
The Wednesday night/Thursday morning she wandered changed everything in an instant. She could not be left alone and I was suddenly in over my caregiver head.
Mom is now in a dementia care facility. A really good one. The staff is wonderful, the fellow residents are sweet. Everyone is treated with dignity and respect. Also with compassion and love. I'll tell you about the journey to get her there in an upcoming post.
Right now I'm feeling a bit politically incorrect, punchy and tired. I have the most awesome sister in the world! She keeps me sane. We've been cleaning out...drawers, cabinets, dressers, whole rooms full of a life well lived....AND A LOT OF CRAZINESS OMG! What I've found almost defies description.
Mom had become really agitated and restless in the last month or so; wanting to go home and packing the seemingly thousands of tote bags she has with all her necessities. Her home was not the home she wanted to go to - it was our home in northeast Detroit that we left in 1976. A time when her husband was on his way home from work, her kids were too young to be left alone for long, and her best friend lived four doors down. Her decision making is affected by the disease and what she packed is a unique potpouri of items.
Two sandals, not matched
3 balls of yarn - perhaps spaghettied around the handles
2 skeins of yarn
magazines
large tube of toothpaste top optional
financial paperwork out of context
jewelry
pens
tissue
one of what has to be ten pairs of glasses (she never throws the old ones out or even donates them)
nail files
anything else she can get her hands on.
And as the Sundowners took root for the night she grew more insistent that she had to get back to her house, anxious that things were not right if she were not there. She became different shades of inconsolable from crying to stubborn. I simply let her continue to pack, keeping her in the house with half hearted lies of going home tomorrow afternoon, trying to get her to go to sleep.
The Wednesday night/Thursday morning she wandered changed everything in an instant. She could not be left alone and I was suddenly in over my caregiver head.