colors

Watching my mom over these years as she suffers from Alzheimer’s has often made me think of Back to the Future, when people are fading from the family photo, and Marty panics; fights to fix it.

My mom has been slowly fading from the family photograph, and sometimes it feels like panic, like I’m Marty and I should save her. But it has mostly turned into a slow burn with the shitty reality that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to keep her from disappearing.

Over the last several weeks, her colors have gone from a muted variety of tones, to a dull black and white. She’s slipping faster. I remember her vibrance; bright red perfectly manicured fingernails, colorful daring makeup, big hair. She hardly ever wore black or gray. She wore bright colors, high heels every day in her younger years, and had a really good run with fashioinable scarves in the eighties.

She wears the same black pants and gray shirt most every day now. She seems to think brighter colors are for special events. There aren’t many special events for her anymore, she can’t handle them. It’s all too much. Too much noise. Too much talking. Too bright. Too much color.

On February 1st we will be moving mom to memory care. Anyone who has been through this knows what this means, what it feels like. The rest of you can imagine. And we can all know that as much as we have in common when we deal with this disease (or any kind of suffering), we are also living in our own isolated version of it. Every person and family is different. It can feel really lonely.

Knowing when to pick a date and rip the band-aid off and move your person away from you is not an actual knowing. It’s simply a doing. There is no right time or wrong time. At some point, you just do it. Sure there are “reasons” like the fact that my mom got up in the middle of the night and put on her coat to leave and that she never knows where she is anymore. It seems obvious to everyone else that the “right” time for her to go was a while ago. But that doesn’t bother me. I know we made it this far, that she’s okay and we’re okay and that we’re doing this. I know that bad things could have happened, and I know that we did the very best we could with how this feels, how it makes you think differently, and how confused you get.

She seems okay, that’s what we would say. Maybe it was fear or denial, but I think that living something like this particular nightmare is so nuanced and layered, you just…keep going. And my dad, her husband of 53 years, by her side for all of them, what was he to do, in the midst of his own sickness, but to carry on and need her, and want her, and live out his best work: fortitude. acceptance. patience. resilience. surrender.

The time is now because of some wise friends and their gentle but firm words. The time is now because of some possibly over-bearing daughters named Shelly and Heather. And the time is now because we’re just…doing it, one small act at a time. Sending the email. Making the call. Making the appointments.

I have not let myself actually think much about what I’m doing as I set this up. I’m just doing it. I just keep going. I will not do it if I over-think it.

This is going to hurt like hell. And my dad and my sister and our families, we’ll do what we’ve been doing for years. We’ll allow pain to work its way toward acceptance, holding on to each other, and the vibrant woman from all the photos over all the years. She’ll never truly be gone.