What you need to know when you read these entries is that I’m not making fun of my mother, or laughing at her, although I may be laughing with her. Dementia is such an awful thing. It robbed my mother progressively. First, she was told she couldn’t drive anymore. Then over time she grew unable to read anything, write anything coherently, and then to write anything at all. This occurred while my father was undergoing his last years in dialysis, an effort he made, we all believe, to stay alive for her. At the same time, she was losing her memory of people’s names and faces. Answering the telephone became impossible when she no longer knew the people who were calling, people she’d known her whole life. She didn’t recognize their voices or names. This was obviously difficult for her to accept. Imagine it for yourself. She was an extraordinarily independent and hardworking woman with a to-do list a mile long every day. Even with her dementia, she was able to do work around the house and yard, as well as clear our basement of things so that we wouldn’t have to do that later…

My dad died in August of 2015. For the next two years, Mom lived in my childhood home at 2129 Brown. We hired people to come in and help her with meals and housework several times a week, but she fought this. Meals on Wheels delivered lunches a few times a week in case one of us couldn’t show up to check her status. We even hired a family member to check in on both of my parents when my father was still alive and after he died.

In the summer of 2016 when I went to stay with Mom for a few days, I tried to help her paint the trim on her porch bannisters. Taking a break, I will never forget her asking me, “Now, which one are you again?”

By the late summer of 2017, despite these efforts, Mom had deteriorated further. We had to shut off the stove, remove the microwave, and left her with only a burner for a home aide to use to heat her meals. We began to prepare her for entering an assisted living/memory care facility. At the end of September, 2017, I stayed with her for a week before she left her house for the last time. The above picture records that event. I have a hard time thinking about these things without crying.

My mother died less than a month ago, on August 19, 2019 at about 12:30 am during a violent storm. I was with her at the time, but had crossed the hall to lie down for awhile, as had been suggested to me by her aides. I called my husband, who works in hospices, to ask if these aides had suggested I leave the room for a reason: did they think leaving her alone would be better for her, help her leave this world? I honestly worried about leaving her. I asked the aide if she was suggesting I leave her alone for a particular reason, ie, was it her experience that the dying found it more peaceful then? She demurred. No, it didn’t really matter, I could do what I wanted. At midnight I stroked Mom’s hair and told her how beautiful she was. Beautiful. I told her to go to sleep.

I lay down in a vacant bed across the hall. Suddenly the wind outside kicked up and whirled into a frenzy the likes of which I have never heard–it howled and whipped around the little building we were in. Whistled. I couldn’t sleep, and raised my head to look out the window. I saw the rain hitting the window and some tree branches lashing about. I wondered if Mom was afraid. Should I get up and check on her? I lay in the bed listening to the storm. I heard the aide check on Mom and then leave her room a few minutes later. The storm continued to scream. At about 12:30 I got up and went to her room to discover she wasn’t breathing anymore.

There is so much more to say I can’t say now. Death is both ugly and beautiful. Everyone got to say goodbye to her, either in person or by phone. I was so proud that my son drove 4 hours to see her before she died.

I don’t know what else to say right now. When I left that night after she died, I discovered she’d blown a tree over in the road outside the assisted living facility, so that I had to turn around and go another way. That was my mother: powerful.