Goodbye Mom

I spend most of my time trying not to be serious.  There is far too much serious in the world and it for the most part just needs to be broken up by a healthy dose of…un-seriousness.  For the most part I try and be that for those in my life.  But not tonight.

I have had the privilege of giving my mother a hug every day for the past six months, but each day, with each passing hug, the woman I hug is less and less my Mom.  I’ve tried to ignore that rough nugget of truth, tried to shrug it off as not being that bad.  But it is that bad.  The woman who raised me, the strong-willed, opinionated, champion of all my causes, giver of the greatest hugs in the world, giving, loving, selfish, beautiful woman who is my Mom is all but gone.  But her body is still here and inside her glazed, blank stare I still see from time to time a glimpse of the woman she was.  But those glimpses are rare now, rare and all too painful to see. 

Alzheimer’s has robbed her of who she was and I have done nothing but stand by and helplessly watch it happen.  Hugged her even as the mother she was slipped away.  I have watch as my Dad, the strongest, greatest man I have ever had the privilege to know, struggled day by day under the weight of caring for a woman who has lost a little of herself every day.  They have been together, fighting, bickering, disagreeing, laughing, crying and loving for as long as time itself it seems, but in the end it is all just a weight of memories that one can barely bear and the other can no longer remember.  

Today my father and my wife carry most of the burden.  My mother is always at my father’s side and if he is out of her sight for more than a few moments she wants to know where he is, when he will return.  It seems so strange to me now because when they we younger (when we were all younger) my Mom spent most of her time finding fault with my Dad.  But now, with her mind slipping away, he is the one thing she clings to.  He hangs on to her as well, but the burden is so hard. 

I try to tell myself that I am helping as much as I can, but in that I am a liar and a coward.  My wife bears most of the burden.  We do not wish to subject my mother to the indignity of having her son clean her up when she struggles with the simplest of routines.  Bathroom time is a complete confusion to her and whenever nature calls my wife or father must accompany my mother to the restroom.  In my heart of hearts I know that I am not strong enough to bear it and so I am grateful to not have to.

I hug her every day and tell her I love her and some days she knows it is me and some days she does not, but I hug her still.   But I don’t always meet her gaze.  I do not because I cannot.  Only yesterday she sat on the couch and I sat across from her on the other and I could feel her looking at me and I would glance her way and see in her eyes that there was someone there, behind that gaze, but it was not the woman that I knew.  It was not the woman I loved and feared and admired and hated and idolized.  It was a woman who wore the shell of the woman I loved, but still could brandish her smile from time to time, just often enough to break all of our hearts.

My 7-year-old accepts her for who she is and she laughs when she makes no sense at all and hugs her and says “oh Grandma,” or looks at me when she rambles off into uncharted territory or becomes angry at a slight that was not there. 

In the end I am led by the strength of my father, the unimaginable love of my wife and the hope of my youngest daughter.

In the end I am only a fool watching my mother slip away without ever having the chance to truly express how much she meant to me.

If you have a loved one being taken by Alzheimer’s, realize this simple truth:  You need to accept what is happening.  You need to understand time is short.  You need to say goodbye when there is still someone there to say goodbye to.  Because in the end the person you loved will be gone long before the body they called home ever is.

I love you Mom.