A few weeks before Mother’s Day, the assisted living where my mom lives announced a special afternoon tea to honor all the mothers and mother figures in the building. My mom phoned me to share this news, slowly reading the flyer she had received about the event. She insisted that I come. I paused, trying to gather a response, and in my silence my mom couldn’t contain herself.
“It’s for people like you,” she said. “You’re my mom!”
And then she laughed and I laughed, though inside me a concoction of emotions started brewing: a peculiar mixture of amusement, sadness, and validation.
In the literal sense, of course, I am not my mom’s mom, but her comment had hit on something very true about the changing landscape of our relationship.
On one hand, our story is no different than that of so many other families. Aging parents gradually go through cognitive and physical changes that require more support while adult children gradually shift into roles of leaders, caregivers, decision-makers. On the other hand, “gradually” was not the pace of our particular story. Instead of a slow decline, it was more like a steep drop-off, with me grabbing frantically at whatever I could on the way down.
The edge of the cliff was my mom being hospitalized for a bleed on her brain. She had tripped and hit her head on concrete while walking the dog. A horrible accident by any account, though she was fortunate to get through surgery and several months of rehabilitation. And yet as time moved on, she was not returning to what I understood to be her baseline. She was increasingly forgetful, struggling to find accurate words to describe what she wanted, and becoming angry at innocuous things.
A thorough neuropsychological evaluation eventually led us to a diagnosis of dementia; a condition her doctor suspected she was predetermined to have, but the brain injury sped up the timeline. Even as the doctor looked her in the eye and used the word “Alzheimer’s”, my mom just stared back uncomprehendingly while my mind went into overdrive about what this meant for the rest of her life, for the rest of my life.
And just like that, life was in free fall. Calls to the Alzheimer’s Association, tears shed, doctor’s appointment upon doctor’s appointment, joining a support group, leaving a support group (because most of the members were nearly twice my age), conferencing with an elder law attorney, my mom’s constant anger and fear as she tried to make sense of an increasingly confusing world, trips to the ER, medication changes, multiple moves to increasingly higher levels of care. And way, way more tears shed by both of us through all of it.
And yet, somehow, here we are almost six years later, my mom giggling after calling me her mom and all I can think about is how bittersweet it all is. I believe many caregivers enter their journey as suddenly as I did, without thinking, just knowing immediately in that moment that we have to be there for our loved one. In the mad rush of juggling a million things, you don’t even have time to adequately process this monumental shift in your life. You don’t slow down enough to grieve your life before the shift. In the case of dementia, you may not find enough moments to grieve your loved one, even as you bear witness to the loss of them, piece by little piece.
The last few Mother’s Days have been difficult, punctuated by a larger percentage of sadness than joy. It is hard to let myself simply relax and be in the day. So much planning goes into a single event — being intentional about pick up and drop off times, ensuring she has the medications she needs, ensuring she is dressed appropriately for the weather, shifting the car around to make enough space for her walker and whatever items she needs that day for security and soothing. Do I feel like my mom’s mom in these moments? Very much so.
Caregiving, whether for a child or an aging loved one, comes with myriad challenges, but the tone of each experience seems wholly different. A parent witnesses their child learn and grow while a caregiver to an aging parent witnesses only decline. It is in this process of decline where grief begins. Even as my mom lives and breathes before me, her illness gradually chips away vocabulary, stories, skills, a capacity to be present. Glimmers of who I’ve always known her to be surface in moments, but much of her washes out to sea, irretrievable except in my own memories.
As this Mother’s Day approaches, I feel both accomplishment for all I have been able to do for my mom and grief that I am losing her. When you so often feel like your mom’s mom, you sometimes forget that you are still their child. A daughter. A person who craves the presence of her mom to love, support, and guide her. No matter how old we are, many of us continue to desire the safety and security of a loving, attuned parent. And when that no longer feels like an option to us, the realization hits like a punch to the stomach.
I would love to offer a therapeutic insight here, but I’m a work in progress like everyone else in trying to find healing. I practice my own therapy strategies with varying degrees of success — sometimes finding a sense of calm in mindful moments with my mom or in creating my own images of safety and peace which I can access when feeling disturbed. But in my reflections on this year’s Mother’s Day, I simply want to send a message of love and compassion to my fellow caregivers who feel like they have become their parents’ parents. It’s a lonely place to be. It’s a hard moment when you realize your life has reached a point where the only person left to parent you is you. I know it can feel deeply painful and deeply unfair.
But I believe in you. I believe in your healing. I believe if your love and strength have brought you this far, you can continue to carry yourself through. In these tremendous hardships and grief, I hope you can still find your own softness and compassion for those you love, for the world, and, most importantly, for yourself. Thank you for all you do and for all you are.
