Chinese New Year 2018
Mom and I went down to dinner, and as I plotted, ended up sitting with two other ladies, rather than by ourselves. Lydia was outgoing, loquacious even, and seemed much younger than my mom. It didn’t take me long to see signs of her dementia. She asked all of us if we should order dinner […]
God is a Gay Black Woman
I made a friend on the train over 10 years ago when commuting from our wee town to the big city. Kathee was outgoing, hystericallly funny, and took no prisoners. We had singing, politics, and administration in common, and soon looked for each other on the ride up and down the coast to work. The […]
Furniture
The general manager at mom’s community has moved to a different position in the company, and the person who helped launch the community is now managing the building again. This pleases me for many reasons. When my daughter was crossing T’s and dotting I’s regarding the cat joining mom, she asked the new GM what […]
Elvis Has Left The Building
Today was the day, after necessary scheduling delays on both mine and my daughter’s part, for Elvis to move in with mom. We met early this morning to transfer Elvis and his gear, more than my grandson arrives for an overnight with, from my truck to my daughter’s SUV. I felt like I was betraying […]
Power Outage
The Island power company called once and emailed 4 times this morning to let me know that 47 homes in the subdivision, where mom’s property is, have a planned power outage tomorrow. I carefully read each email and discovered that there is currently no power due to ‘damaged equipment.’ I chuckled to myself that at […]
Garden Show
I spent the last three days at our regional garden show. It’s good to see people in my industry, that I’ve spent so little time in over the last year. Lot’s of hugs and catching up. The display gardens have been better, and worse. Some were outright charming. Sedums are still hot, and air plants […]
Books
Here’s a short list of books that have helped me on this journey: “And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer and Longer” by Fredrick Backman. This novella, originally published in Swedish in 2015, gave me the gift, just last week, of being able to grieve for the loss of who my mom used to […]
Old Friends
In the last week I have had to tell two of mom’s old friends, and colleagues, that mom has moderate dementia, offer them some examples of where mom is on her path, and then grieve with them, over the phone, while they took in the reality of their friend’s illness. Today’s conversation was particularly difficult […]
January 2018 Island Trip – Day Four
As is my habit, I managed to catch the earlier ferry off the Island this morning. It was a last minute decision driven by checking the schedule online, and realizing I had about 7 minutes to leave, and 5 1/2 minutes of tasks left to do. After assuring myself that I both wanted an additional […]
Dementia Dance - Travels with Mom 