The expected death of a loved one still hurts terribly. My mother lived with early onset Alzheimer’s disease for over a decade. She lived in a nursing home with advanced dementia for almost five years. And she lived on hospice care for two years. I prepared for her death for years. I was relieved, of…
We were originally supposed to get married in May of 2008. But, when it was clear that my mother’s early onset Alzheimer’s disease was progressing rapidly, we moved the wedding up by four months. I’m happy she still knew I was her daughter at my wedding despite Alzheimer’s disease. Fifteen years ago today, on January…
My mother forgot my seventeenth birthday. My junior prom had been the evening before, and I slept over at a friend’s house. When I walked through the front door with my overnight bag that Sunday morning, I fully expected a “Happy Birthday” greeting from my family, yet I received none. Exhausted from the late-night shenanigans…
A counselor once told me that my mother would be more “accessible” to me after she died than when she was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. I didn’t fully understand what she meant at the time. She thought I was going to be able to communicate with my dead mother? Yet, shortly after my mom died,…
