The Last Birthday at Home

BB, 68, not knowing what to do with candles.

I sent my regular check-in email to our case-worker on Monday morning after a very wonderful, albeit emotional, Mother's Day weekend in Asheville. No News.

And then an hour later there was news. A bed at an assisted living center (memory unit) was available for my Mom. She had been on the waiting list for four months and we knew a bed was coming available just didn't know the exact date. I had prayed it wasn't before her birthday or the wild Christ School 50th Reunion for my Dad and it wasn't. It let us have a huge celebratory weekend with my father's classmates, all of whom love my Mom to pieces. 

She moves in less than two weeks.

I sobbed at the email. My brain went numb. We are taking her from the home she has lived in for 33 years and leaving her some place strange. Some place cold. Without her beloved husband who she has massive separation anxiety from. Without her beloved Boykin, Gumbo, who she has even more massive separation anxiety from. Away from her plants, her birds, her gardens, her bed and her closet. From her bubble baths, her make-up and her jewelry. From all the comforts of her home that she loves so much, to a place that looks like a hospital and where she knows no one. 

This is the gut-wrenching part. And if I seem like I'm being melodramatic it is well deserved. 

We are concocting lies "therapeutic lies" as Dayna Steele so wonderfully emailed me yesterday morning. We are going to use the approach that she is getting rehab for her arm that has myclonus (jerking and moving on its own). We are making a packing list. I'm creating collages in plastic frames because no glass is allowed. We have to make an appointment to cut her rings off (her arthritis is so bad in her hands they are stuck) because apparently nursing homes are like a bad neighborhood in Detroit. I need to write her name on all her clothes we send like I'm packing her for summer camp.

Gut-wrenching.

And then there comes the moment my father, brother and I say goodbye and walk out of the facility and get in the car and look at each other. Will she scream? Do we redirect her like my friend Erin's parents did and had her go look at horses at summer camp while they drove away? Will she be scared? Lonely? Hate us? What do we do with ourselves then?

Or maybe she will thrive? Become the mayor? Dazzle everybody with her warmth? I received a comment on the blog from last week from one of her friends at Jazzercise and it could not be more true about my mother. 

Beautiful pictures. Barbara looks so happy. In fact she almost always is happy at Jazzercise. Even when she comes in a litlte serious, all it takes is the music to start and she is happy and singing along again. She still loves to say HI to everyone and spread her love and thanks for every little thing we might do to help her. She brings a smile to our faces even on days that we do not feel like smiling. Her love is contagious. 

Are we taking this broken bright light and placing it in a dark cave? I know that is not true but that is how it feels. We are ending her reign. Silencing her. Imprisoning her love. 

It is time. We can all admit that. We are well aware that most people would have done this ages ago. Being an Alzheimer's caregiver is taking away the Robin everyone knows and loves. And if I'm brutally honest it has done some work on me too. We know this is the best thing for her safety and health. But knowing it is time does not make this step any easier. 

Please pray for us, specifically my father. I'm treading water in this deep pool of emotions only by making to-do lists and emailing family and trying to create a room for her that she will love. I'm in project mode. I can collapse the day after.

I know we are not the enemy. Alzheimer's is the enemy. But that does not make these next two weeks any easier on our hearts.