Watching Mom slip away

My mom sacrificed so much for me. She endured my father's abuse to protect me and to provide me with as normal a life as she could, only she was too afraid to leave him and strike out on her own, her only misstep.

She helped me through college and then through graduate school all the way to my PhD, so that I graduated with absolutely no debt. She even helped to finance a two-year stay in Boston in the Eighties when I was offered the chance to be a Visiting Scientist in Noam Chomsky's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. My shoebox apartment in Boston was so small that it could not contain a sofa. I had 2 chairs in my living room, and yet this tiny third-floor walkup still cost almost $700 per month even way back in 1987.

When my step-father died, the house they had shared for twenty-one years was sold according to his wishes so that its worth could be shared by Mom and his two children. It was devastating to her to be sorting through his belts and shoes, making decisions on what to keep and what to send here or there with him gone just a few short months, but she bore this just like she had everything else in her life. She stood tall, she smiled, she loved, and she got it done. She found herself a smaller house, one that she could afford alone, and bought it and put to work her decorating magic. Everyone who ever entered the home stopped cold when they looked into her living room and commented on what a "charming," "beautiful" place it was. And it was. Mom put that house in my name almost 20 years ago so that no matter what may happen to her or to me, I would always have a roof over my head.

Then last fall she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She had had it a while, but I was in denial about her symptoms. Looking back, I can see the signs. Mom had seen her own mother lost to that disease and die from its complications, and it was her greatest fear. And now it has happened to her.  My heart broke for her. I brought her here to live with me, but not being used to my house, she tripped and fell one Saturday night, breaking her shoulder. After that it was the hospital, then rehab in a skilled nursing home, then on to Assisted Living.

A few months ago, she fell one beautiful Sunday morning in her room at the assisted living center and broke her hip. She had emergency surgery that day. Then it was back to rehab, where on her 5th day there, they let her fall out of her wheelchair where she had been left unbuckled in and unattended. She broke the same hip in a different place and had a second emergency surgery that night, a scant week after the first surgery, with a new incision cut across the original one, which had barely begun to heal. 

Both surgeries have healed now, but she cannot stand on the foot on that side and therefore cannot walk, even with a walker, thus not qualifying to get out of this horrible place and return to Assisted Living or to my home. No one has been able to determine why she cannot control her foot. It seems to be the Alzheimer's, now beginning to rob her of control of her own body.

We are private pay at the skilled nursing/rehab center and are going broke at almost $6000 per month, the money she worked so  hard for all of her life and guarded so carefully, denying herself luxuries, vacations, lots of new clothes, all her life, but thankfully she is unaware of money, the need for money, now. When she runs out, she will fall upon Medicaid, something she would never want, but thankfully she won't realize, and so she won't have it to feel bad about.

As the months wear on, my dear mother is sinking deeper into Alzheimer's. She has no appetite, no interest in food. She has lost down from 130 pounds to 98 pounds since she fell and broke her shoulder.

I am losing her.

I cannot imagine living in a world without her in it. She makes the world a better place just by being here. She has always been kind and generous, loving and forgiving to everyone she has ever known, even to my dad. And she always was and still is beautiful. God gave Mom and me to each other, and He truly knew what He was doing. We are a perfect pair. She was my best friend all through high school and college, and I could talk to her about anything, literally anything. And I did. I can still see her sitting on the closed toilet lid cover watching me do my hair and makeup for a date as we talked girl talk the entire time I got ready for a date.

Her health as a child and young woman had been very poor, and no one, not even her doctors could believe she carried me to term and that I was born a healthy, happy baby. She was never able to have another child. She lost one baby when I was twelve, and I think it was for the best. The pregnancy might have killed her. My dad never acknowledged the life she was carrying; she had to grieve the loss of that little one alone.

How will I live without her?

Who will I turn to when I need to hear a loving voice?

What will I do when I feel this need to hug her, to hold her in my arms, but she is not there?

Because of my little stroke this summer, no one wants me to visit her. They do not want her to see me until I fully recover in order to protect her from the worry and sorrow and how terribly upset she would be at how sick I look. I have some symptoms like those of Parkinson's Disease, and they cannot be hidden. She would be so worried about me if she saw me. All my symptoms are improving. They will not last forever. But right now I am going through Mom withdrawal.

I know how blessed I am to have had her for 64 years of my life. I have dear friends who lost their mothers while they were in college, in their teens and early twenties. My heart breaks for them.

I do not want to want too much. I know I am already blessed, but how will I ever be able to say goodbye to the love of my life?

One Christmas morning around 2002

A Polaroid I took of Mom, Bo, and Gray Cat, 2000

Mom with Duke around 2005

Mom with poor little Miss Gretta 2005