nobody knows what to do

This photo was taken eight years ago. Elsie was two years old, my mom was sixty three and my dad was sixty five. I rememeber those pink cowgirl boots and that little purse from Nanny. Elsie now, at age ten, hates pink but still loves cowgirl boots and her Nanny and Bapa.

My mom looks so put together, healthy. My dad looks strong and healthy.

In a blink my parents went from quite healthy for their age, to diagnosed with terrible things at sixty seven and sixty nine years young.

I miss them, the people in the photo, and I love them now just the same. But no one misses the people in the photo like they do. Each other, and themselves, living in capable bodies, with a brain that wasn’t dying of Alzheimer’s Disease. Both of them live with words like “chronic” or “terminal” now. It can feel so much like a march to the grave. You don’t get to stop. You can’t turn around. You let go of people as you go, those that can’t seem to stick by you. Your feet hurt…hell, everything hurts, and you don’t get to take a break in a place with a nice view. You are taking medications, seeing doctors, getting treatment. Those are your stops along the way, things that exhaust you further.

With illness being this cruel, you would think all hope and light and laughter would be gone. It’s not. In fact, we are better at it than ever. Better at seeing it, feeling it, and releasing it back out into the world. There are bad days where none of that happens of course, but we’re still walking, cracking the dry humored jokes that start with Dad. Isn’t that something?

I’ve mentioned on Facebook that we’re assessing a memory care situation. It’s a difficult thing to update people on, because at this stage, our minds and hearts are entirely swallowed with pros and cons and questions. We’re walking this slowly, the way my dad has always made decisions.

The thing is, it’s never going to feel right or good. We shoot for those two words with our decisions, no? Okay, this feels right, let’s do it!

This will never feel right.

Alzheimer’s brings a more complicated and layered thing to this decision. Few partners of people with this disease have ever chosen memory care “at the right time,” whatever that means. The “right time” is often far in the past by the time the person is settled into a new place to live with just some clothes and the most basic things like a toothbrush and some towels. See you later.

We know mom is definitely to a stage that means she is ready for memory care. And yet. Sometimes knowing something with your head and telling yourself, We can do this, we can get through it. We can do hard things, look at all the other hard things we’re doing. We’ve got this…

doesn’t work.

And it’s because we are only human with these bone dry needs and our aching hearts, sore muscles, muddied minds. And it’s because leaving someone in memory care feels like giving your loved one over to someone better equipped to care for them, like an open adoption, and that comes with the shame of feeling it’s an abandonment, even if you know it’s not.

For the family taking their loved one to dementia care centers, it is an abandonment. It simply cannot feel like anything else, and so it is, for us. It is. It will never not feel like one. And Alzheimer’s Disease is at fault, but it feels like we are. No matter how I twist it around in my head, when I imagine getting mom settled and then leaving her in a locked unit with no idea why she’s there, I get physically sick.

Of course it’s not our intention to abandon her, but this disease leaves us no choice. A person we love will go from the comforts of home, the comfort of our constant companionship, and leave the dog that stays at her feet, to live apart.

With her ravaged Alzheimer’s brains, she will have no idea why we did it.

Even if we say, It’s for the best. To keep you safe. You’ll be happier here, with people around. It was time.

Nothing we say will make sense to a person who doesn’t even know she has Alzheimer’s.

Of course, this is how it feels right now, and maybe that would change. There would be an adjustment for all of us. You never know, mom could love it far more than we imagined. Right now that’s quite hard to believe because her mind won’t allow her to have a good attitude about anything much.

This is simply how it feels right now. I’m nothing if not letting people in on the messy process of my journey toward better things, which are also on the horizon. I don’t wait until it’s all cleaned up and then tell you how we did it. I tell you how it is as we go (complicated, confusing, painful). In other words, I tell you the truth.

(P.S. I’m not seeking advice, please and thank you kindly. Advice overwhelms me, and we do have plenty of wise trusted people for that in our lives, don’t worry.)