This Demented Life: A Flash Blog

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Party On!

CareGiving.com is hosting its annual Holiday Progressive Blog Party, and you’re invited!

On December 18 and 19, stop by the featured websites and blogs of family caregivers, and drop off holiday well-wishes and good cheer. It’s a cook-free party; instead of dishes, enjoy comfort and support. The party lasts two days so you’ll have plenty of visiting time.

CareGiving.com is giving away a gift a day. For a chance to win, just post a comment on the site.

And be sure to check out Taking Care this week. We’re a featured blog at the party, and we’re gifting you with triple treats every day, because giving your best to others begins with the gift of self-care.

Taking Care . . . it’s about transforming passion into purpose.

 

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The Midnight, Cloudy

Mom goes to bed early, exhausted from a snowy afternoon of Christmas shopping . . . only to soon arise and shower, waking me up in the cold black of midnight: “Why are you sleeping? Tell your father and the others downstairs it’s time to go.”

My parents have been divorced for forty years. There’s nobody downstairs.

I take her back to bed and lie with her and she gets up three more times. Her eyes are cloudy and glazed and blank. How fragile she’s become, in body and spirit.

She’s sleeping now but I’m awake, her confusion transferred through that shared and unbreakable mother-daughter bond. She calls me “mother” now, needs help with buttons. Shoelaces. Toilets. I feel her frustration; it’s in my blood. Repeat the answers to the endless questions. Hug her. Love her.

And, since I realize I can’t make it snow, I let go.

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Old Familiar Carols

Thanksgiving is over, Black Friday a distant memory. Christmas lights twinkle along the block. Holiday season is here.

You have a week of respite before returning to Alzheimer’s World, the world that needs no advent calendar to mark the season’s frenzied restlessness, the world where family Christmas traditions have long been forgotten.

You’ll be home for the holidays with your mother. You have high hopes. Your mind is a flurry of ideas: decorations and cookies, carols and cards.

You’ll decorate the tree. The spruce once cut from the woods is now artificial; she doesn’t notice. You’ll bake the popovers she made every Christmas morning; she loves this “new” recipe.

You’ll fill stockings. Help wrap gifts because last year, Scotch tape induced panic attacks. You’ll be home for the holidays, on a one-way ticket. You’ll be home because she’s your mother.