During the past couple of weeks, I was in Oklahoma, caring for my mother. It was a strange experience, because it was actually my sister who was in need of care. Kris had an extensive back surgery that required a 360 operation – front and back. She was in ICU for a while, in the post-op ward for a couple of days and then in rehab. Thankfully, she has now returned home and will do follow-up rehab from there.
But Kris lives with Mom and helps to care for her. So someone needed to be there, to help Mom with her confusing issues and be her comfort during the evenings. Since I don’t yet have a job, I volunteered.
Why is it so difficult to switch roles? Perhaps because mothers are the strength and the heart of the home for so many years. They are the ones who fix our meals, wipe our tears and bandage our boo-boos. We owe them a great deal of love and respect.
Yet now, my mother is losing some of her short-term memories. Time and space boundaries are disappearing in the fog of early dementia. It takes an incredible amount of patience to just be around Mom, to answer the same questions over and over, to make sure she doesn’t follow her confusion rather than reality.
I do not understand why this is happening to my mother, and I don’t like it one bit. After watching Dad suffer through Alzheimer’s for 10 years, I don’t think it is fair that his care-giver now has some of the same difficulties. But that’s just the way it is.
All I can do is pray for her, continue to honor and respect her, send a card on Mother’s Day and pray like crazy that I don’t do the same thing to my son.
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