My Mother Died August 17th

It was a difficult death. My summer is a nightmare blur. Alzheimer's Disease takes away every scratch of dignity that one had during life. This was my second time going through it - my father-in-law had AD and lived with us for the last 5 months of his life. This was my mother and it was much, much worse. To see her trying so hard to maintain her sense of herself, to try and make herself understood was almost too much to bear. We got through it, but it was not easy for any of us. I may or may not write more about it at a later date, but for now, it is enough to know that my mother is much better off. It was a blessing when she finally died. We can now track the AD back to about 8 or 9 years ago at least. It was slowly disintegrating her mind. She had been such a vital, active person all her life and it was only in the last two years that it severely impaired her. But she was almost 92 and still didn't look like she was a day over 75. She had had one of those lives that was marked with one tragedy after another, yet she picked herself up and kept on going - sometimes with great difficulty - when my father died, it was a blow from which she almost didn't recover. She loved her grandchildren and got joy from her great grandchildren. She loved her daughters but was more afraid for us than we could have ever understood. As I have said before, we knew little about her past - we know a lot more now. Near the end, I spent over an hour with her in my arms; she was sobbing and wanted her mother. It was not easy.

If I could have taken this term off of work, I would have. I am feeling terribly non-social these days, but slowly as work starts to invigorate me, I am getting back on my feet.

I will try to get back to blogging - it should help refocus my energies. There is a lot of other writing to do that is not blog stuff. This is a start.