This Demented Life: A Flash Blog

After my stepmother’s stroke, my father became primary caregiver, coordinating doctor appointments, filling prescriptions, grocery shopping, and cooking meals.

He often experienced caregiver burnout. I visited as much as possible, in the midst of a demanding sales job.

My stepmother passed away two years ago, a bittersweet ending to their thirty years together. He was devastated over her loss. “I miss not having anyone to talk to,” he told me.

I spent months helping him navigate the complex web of death. Months stretched into years. Never have I spent so much time with my parents.

Yet I still see them through the lens of a child.

Soon, my father will eighty-five. I’m thankful for our increased time together; for his new friends; for the lessons in caregiving he unwittingly shared with me – a blueprint for my own caregiving journey.

June may be official Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, but for dementia caregivers, Alzheimer’s makes its presence known every hour, minute and second of the day. Alzheimer’s Awareness moments breathlessly rob our loved ones and ourselves of emotions and memories, of sanity and self.

Alzheimer’s, like time, knows no hour.

It impacts nearly everyone I know, with the sheer, blunt force of a torpedo. Just this week, I’ve added two new recipients to the list. An old hiking buddy whom I hadn’t seen in years is now conducting clinical research for Alzheimer’s. And a close friend, who lost his father to Alzheimer’s last year is struggling with his mother’s recent dementia diagnosis.

Life with Alzheimer’s is seconds and inches.

DID YOU KNOW: An estimated 47 million people worldwide are living with dementia, and that’s expected to reach 131.5 million in 2050

I have another confession: I love to clean.

It wasn’t always like this.

In the jetsetting days of my past, I cleaned my own house for a while. Twenty-two hundred square feet. Three bedrooms. Two baths. A weekly two-hour obligation that bred bitterness. In time, my husband hired a cleaning service. I didn’t object.

When I left that career to care for my mother, the housekeeper was the first budget cut. I floundered for months in this new life, adrift and rudderless, struggling with the unsalaried turmoil of dementia caregiving. I had lost my identity.

Gradually, mundane tasks moved me out of the rabbit hole of depression. I meditated while washing dishes. I delighted in folding laundry. I cleaned with passion, scrubbing the souls of my house and myself. And in the process, I found that caregiving is my purpose.