Thursday Thoughts, Alzheimer’s and death

My Mom passed away last Friday. I got the call, but couldn’t make it in time to be there for her. I wanted to, because she was an atheist and I thought she must be terrified. I wanted to make it easier, but just like everything with this disease, easier is always questionable.

I thought on the way home, as I was crying and trying to drive, that I wished it was Tuesday again. Not Thursday, because the day before no matter what I did, I could not seem to ease her distress. But Tuesday, when she slept half the day. I was so sad. I felt so helpless. All I could do was hold her hand and it seemed like nothing at all. But on Friday, I wanted Tuesday back.

That’s how this disease is. You always want Tuesday back. Even the worst days of the “before” are better than the days of the “after”. I knew it at the time too. I knew when my mother would ramble on and she made no sense at all and introvert that I am, I was quickly exhausted trying to answer, that I would want those moments back. But even then, you don’t hold on to them long enough. You don’t live in the moment enough because there is always pain, often from remembering that other “before”.

You would also think that after all the years of tears that I would be mostly numb right now. I remember one terrible day driving home from a visit, crying in the car, sobbing to my mother who wasn’t there, that I couldn’t fix it. That no matter how hard, I couldn’t make the disease go away. I couldn’t get her back. And I was sorry that I’d failed her. I did–I do even now–feel like I failed her. You could tell me I didn’t. I could say I know, but no matter what, it sits in some dark place in my heart. I can no more get rid of that guilt and sadness than I can destroy the disease.

But those tears were not enough. I am so sad, hurt so much that I wish I could just rip my heart out of my chest and stop the pain. As I writer, I should be able to articulate why, I should be able to put the thoughts that bring this on into words, but I can’t. I don’t think; it just hits me. I’ve lost other people. My father, my stepfather, even my dog (who was a people, at least in his mind). They all hurt, but this is worse and I can’t say why.

This one thing, though, I do understand. I have been able to cry these last months on command. For no reason or whatever reason you wanted to create. I didn’t know why. It was weird. Now I do. It was this. It was the knowledge somewhere that I couldn’t dwell on it, that my mother way dying and I couldn’t fix it. Now it’s here and between the sobbing jags, I reach places where those tears have stopped. So that’s something.

And those are my thoughts for this week.