It's December.
- 26 months ago my mom moved from my (and her) childhood home in Hawaii to a retirement and assisted living complex down the street from me in Virginia.
- 3 years ago my husband and I had our youngest child.
- 3.5 years ago my mom was diagnosed with dementia.
- 6 years ago our first baby was born.
- 7 years ago it became clear something was going on with my mom's cognition.
- 8 years ago we moved to Virginia
- 33 years ago I was born to a bad ass mom who raised me as a single parent and gave me an amazing life.
I'm often referred to as sandwiched. I'm in between caring for my sick parent and raising my little kids. My sandwich is a little more of a panini... I am smashed in. I have a 6 year old, an *almost* 4 year old, I am a full time lay minister at a large church, and I have a mom with dementia. Most people in the sandwich generation have teenagers and elderly parents. I have neither. You could call me advanced.
This is not what I imagined 33 looking like.
Some of you are reading this because you love my mama. She was the best friend you could ask for. Loyal as the day is long, funny as shit, and an amazing baker.
Some of you are reading this because you love me and take really good care of me. I have inherited my mom's gift of surrounding myself with amazing people. I did not inherit her wit but I can bake a mean chocolate chip cookie.
Some of you are reading this because no one tells you how the hell you are supposed to do this! Spoiler alert: I have no damn clue but come on down for some solidarity and swears.
Some of you are reading this because my mom was the best story teller there is and you think I'm the crazy daughter who has locked her mom up behind bars and told her she's sick when there is nothing wrong with her. I appreciate how much you love my mom and that you think I'm so clever... sadly, I'm not, she really is sick, and her assisted living community is nicer than any hotel I've ever stayed in. Thanks for fiercely believing my mom. You are welcome to come on down anytime to have coffee with her in her normal spot each morning in the coffee shop, go on an afternoon stroll with her around the swanky subdivision, and pet her dog. Having a friend as young as my mom (currently 67) with dementia is earth-shattering and hard. I would want me to be the bad guy, too, and for my friend to be healthy. I wish that was the truth.
The past few months have been extra rough. Mom has had a big drop in cognition that we were hoping was due to an infection or some other medically fixable reason. She has the great care and patient and attentive doctors who went down every road with me but it seems that this is just one more step in this shitty disease.
The great news is: mom is happy. She laughs and jokes and the fact that her short term memory is completely gone means that even after one of those heart wrenching moments of confusion, she is able to move on and enjoy her day.
Writing has always been my safe space, my therapy, my release. I am at the point in this disease where I need a lot of that. I have lost my mom while she is still right in-front of me. I want to keep everyone up to date but there are so many of you and the act of sharing the details of her decline make me ill. Just typing this now makes stomach acid creep into my throat but I know I need to do it. I know many of you need to hear it.
Caretaking is not only a lonely place but a vulnerable one. I have a wildly supportive husband and friends. My goal is to give my mom the most dignity possible and the fullest life attainable with this disease which means I live in an alternate world. HER world, a constantly shifting and fluid place. There are stories of times that never existed but in her mind are more real than any past we shared. The past is mine to hold now, mine to remember. Those stories are not for my mom anymore... her world is her truth and we do everything we can not to shatter it. Shattering her reality destroys her. Some days I have a gaggle of brothers, other days I have children much older than my own, and some days I am just a nice woman that takes my mom to Target.
This sandwiched life, it's damn painful and hard but it's also teaching me more about grace and living than I thought imaginable.
I am gaining some major ninja skills. Last week I stealth removed my mom's entire wardrobe that didn't fit (can you imagine gaining weight -- not remembering -- and putting on clothes that used to fit and are now too small EVERY DAY ... it's basically my hell) and replaced it with a completely new wardrobe mimicking her old that I scoured the Internet looking for.
I am gaining the amazing skill of letting shit go. Don't think I'm a good daughter but don't know me... let that shit go. Expectations of my adult life with my mom (wine on the porch, phone calls about parenting, week long vacations with my husband while my mom took care of my kids)... I'm letting that shit go.
All I have is now. A mom that loves me deeply even if she can't always show it. Kids that love my mom better than the rest of us can hope to. And the promise that even though today is the best day we have left I get the privilege of being my mom's person.
So here I am, sandwiched in. Welcome to my life.
The great news is: mom is happy. She laughs and jokes and the fact that her short term memory is completely gone means that even after one of those heart wrenching moments of confusion, she is able to move on and enjoy her day.
Writing has always been my safe space, my therapy, my release. I am at the point in this disease where I need a lot of that. I have lost my mom while she is still right in-front of me. I want to keep everyone up to date but there are so many of you and the act of sharing the details of her decline make me ill. Just typing this now makes stomach acid creep into my throat but I know I need to do it. I know many of you need to hear it.
Caretaking is not only a lonely place but a vulnerable one. I have a wildly supportive husband and friends. My goal is to give my mom the most dignity possible and the fullest life attainable with this disease which means I live in an alternate world. HER world, a constantly shifting and fluid place. There are stories of times that never existed but in her mind are more real than any past we shared. The past is mine to hold now, mine to remember. Those stories are not for my mom anymore... her world is her truth and we do everything we can not to shatter it. Shattering her reality destroys her. Some days I have a gaggle of brothers, other days I have children much older than my own, and some days I am just a nice woman that takes my mom to Target.This sandwiched life, it's damn painful and hard but it's also teaching me more about grace and living than I thought imaginable.
I am gaining some major ninja skills. Last week I stealth removed my mom's entire wardrobe that didn't fit (can you imagine gaining weight -- not remembering -- and putting on clothes that used to fit and are now too small EVERY DAY ... it's basically my hell) and replaced it with a completely new wardrobe mimicking her old that I scoured the Internet looking for.
I am gaining the amazing skill of letting shit go. Don't think I'm a good daughter but don't know me... let that shit go. Expectations of my adult life with my mom (wine on the porch, phone calls about parenting, week long vacations with my husband while my mom took care of my kids)... I'm letting that shit go.
All I have is now. A mom that loves me deeply even if she can't always show it. Kids that love my mom better than the rest of us can hope to. And the promise that even though today is the best day we have left I get the privilege of being my mom's person.
So here I am, sandwiched in. Welcome to my life.
