The SECOND Worst Thing

I have been writing this update in my head since Wednesday.  I just haven't been able to do it because it's the SECOND worst thing.

We had to put my mom's beloved dog, Puna, down on Wednesday.  Suddenly.  Without planning or preparation. With lots and lots of tears.

If you've known mom at all in the last 13 years you've known Puna.  She rescued him a month before I graduated from college and he took his place as favorite child instantly.  He has been my mom's constant, her heart, her safe-place through the rollercoaster of the past 13 years.  He was there for my marriage, our move, mom's retirement, her diagnosis, her move, and her new life here.  They were an extension of each other. 

So much so, it seems, that he was plagued with the same disease she was... neurological decline. What we thought had been a stroke a couple of weeks ago quickly spiraled into a clear quality of life issue.  I got an urgent call at work at 1:55pm Wednesday that the dog was not doing well.  I rushed to her, we loaded into my van, and headed to the vet.  What unfolded was painful, beautiful, and a testament to the good that lives in the world. 

Our vet honors mom, and although he knows that I will be paying the bills and decoding the lingo to her, he always speaks directly to her.  He honors her love of her sweet dog and is more compassionate that I knew possible.  When he told her the most humane thing would be to put the dog down I thought my mom would collapse, but even as her cognition declines her strong spirit remains.  She knew she had to do what was right by her dog.  We cried, we told stories, we said goodbye.  The women that work with our vet not only gave us the space and time we needed but then wept with us, honoring the powerful love that my mom and Puna shared.  They got it.  They felt it with us.  They felt it with me.  In what has been the clearest moment yet that our roles have reversed those women made me feel less alone in the shitty place of parenting your parent. 

Jay called The Lodge ahead of us to prepare the way for mom's grief, which we knew would be deep.  We walked the painful path back to her apartment and I sat with her as she wept and wept and wept.  We gathered up donations to take to the SPCA of treats and leashes and blankets.  I knew I would need to eventually leave to get back to work for Wednesday night programming.  When I finally slipped out of her room I was greeted by a gaggle of employees from the owner to the executive director waiting to jump in and wrap mom in love. 

They created a memorial for the dog as they do for residents. 

Y'all, they created a MEMORIAL for a DOG to help my mom through this.  They get her.  They get how hard this is.  They are saints.  The love and care she gets from a million sides gives me the peace I need to walk through this.  She has been busy. No one lets her sit too long because that is when the pain starts to seep in.  They let her cry and help her keep going. 

I am not sure what loosing Puna means for us.  It's been one of my biggest fears for a long time.  So far, the pain of this loss is being wrapped up in love and grace and compassion from all sides. 

As we held Puna during his last minutes my mom turned to me, looked me directly in the eyes, and told me, "this has been the worst month of my life; first my dad dies, then my mom, then my sister, and now my dog." She is experiencing all of her greatest losses at once.  My grandfather, her dad, died in the early 1980's.  My aunt, her sister, died in 2001.  My grandmother, her mom, died in 2006.  In her mind, it's all been this month.

This disease does some cruel things but so far, this is the cruelest.  There is no telling my mom differently, this is what she believes is true, this is what her brain is telling her, this is HER reality.  I can only sit in it with her and hold space for that unimaginable pain. 

So there it is.  What many of us were utterly afraid of, has happened.  My mom has proved her resilience even in the most heartbreaking of circumstances.  I am once again grateful for the ways that people extend compassion and kindness and work tirelessly to give my mom dignity in a million ways.

Puna, as much as you smelled bad and drove me crazy for ALL of my adult life...  I am grateful for what you were for my mom: a constant source of love and connection through unimaginable life changes.  I believe you saved her, time and time again... thank you for being the companion she needed on this leg of her journey.  

Stuck Between

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.