How Alzheimer's Disease in My Family Has Changed My Life 3/2/2004 3:16:26 PM
One of my friends has a Web site called "Laffter After". Sometimes it's that, and sometimes it's tears. One thing for sure, being a caregiver for a mother with Alzheimer's certainly changed my life forever. I am a different person today than I was ten years this August when I moved in with my mother to be her caregiver. For one thing, I think I finally grew up when I was faced with the responsibility of taking care of my mother. Perhaps for the first time in my life I had a purpose and a reason for living beyond myself. I was not always the best caregiver, and I made lots of mistakes, but I did make an attempt to give my mother care in the last year of her life. I finally did something to begin repaying her for all she did in caring for me. Our roles were reversed, and I cared for her as she faded and went backwards in time, becoming the little girl I never had.
I turned forty while I was with her, but I had it so much easier that she had at my age. When she was forty, she had borne four children, and I was her baby to care for at the same time as she was caring for her dying parents. Times were hard, without all the modern conveniences with which I was blessed. She was so overworked and so used to no airconditioning that she did not even notice the hot flashes of menopause that have been a major discomfort to me in recent years. There were times when I was with her that she remembered nothing since taking care of her parents, and she thought what had happened to her was because of that task.
That was early on when I moved in with her. A little later, this seventy-eight year old woman saw herself as a pregnant woman about to have a baby in the middle of the night. Still a little later, at seventy-nine, she saw herself as a child, and she cried out in the middle of the night, asking why her mama and papa had brought her there and left her.
All the emotions of fear, anger, guilt, and sadness were with me as never before throughout my time as my mother's caregiver and for a time afterward. There were times after she died when I could hardly work for crying.
I am better now, eight years after her death, but I am still changed. The purpose she gave me remains. I've done web sites, written articles, written books, talked to support groups and nursing classes, all about my mother and Alzheimer's. As much as I've always hated getting up before a group of people, I cannot say no when I am asked. Usually I just read my poems, tell a little of our story, maybe show a PowerPoint presentation, or some java slide shows from my web site. People cry, and they thank me for making them cry, for helping the healing tears come.
Yes, I've changed. And I have a job to do. Thanks to my mother.
