Even So

by Gail




I have been pretty sad this week. My mother is in the end stages of an Alzheimer’s-like disease. When I was growing up, my mother had seizures that couldn’t be diagnosed as having been caused by anything that her doctors could find. About ten years ago, it became obvious to me that something else was going on with my mother. Two years later, she was diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s. She was eventually tested and found to be lacking the gene that is normally found in Alzheimer’s patients. None of this really matters to me anymore. I am just telling you so you will know.
I have grown up with a mother who has never really been well. Physically, her body was typically quite healthy, but something has never been quite right with her brain. Knowing exactly why doesn’t seem so very important. When I speak of my mother’s illness now, I just say that she has Alzheimer’s because it is easier. Nobody asks for the particulars and nobody would be able to tell the difference anyway.
My father takes care of my mother at home. In August, he suffered a heart attack and had to have emergency, quadruple bypass surgery. My father actually drove himself to the doctor’s office that afternoon and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. By the time my sister was notified and got to my parents’ house, my mother had fallen out of bed and was on the floor of their bedroom. She had been there for quite a while.
I went to stay with my father after he was allowed to go home from the hospital. My sister was taking care of my mother at her own home since she lived in town. I had planned on staying with my father for a few weeks hoping to help him get well. In the middle of my first week there, I called my husband on his cell phone since I couldn’t reach him at home and it was late in the evening. He was with our daughter in the emergency room. Eight hours away from me. As it turned out, Lily had to have an emergency appendectomy. I thank God that my husband is such a wonderful and capable father and that he has such a good relationship with our girls. I can’t imagine how I would have been able to bear to be so far away from my child during such a major event in her life if he hadn’t been with her the entire time. She had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days and my husband stayed on a cot near her bed the entire time. As soon as she was safely in the care of some of our good friends, he came to get me. He was exhausted. I was torn between wanting to care for my family in two different places at once. I ended up only staying with my father for a week. My mother came home a few days before I left. My father would not hear of her going into a nursing home.
As it turns out, my mother can’t even stay in a nursing home because she doesn’t have a “medically treatable” condition. So my mother is at home right now. She will not eat. She cannot see or walk or speak. She just screams all the time. My father, feeling defeated and exhausted, finally tried to get my mother into a nursing home, but they only let her stay for a few weeks before they sent her home.
I am tired. I told someone recently that “it is well with my soul”. And it is. It is well with my soul. This is just such tiresome business. This living.