Dancing With Death (My Mom’s Alzheimer’s)

Pixabay: Woman Standing on Dimmed Area

I have stopped struggling with death.
More and more it becomes a dance. I step forward, backward, bending, yielding. I am learning to flow.

I cannot save my mother. It was never my role. More and more I try to understand, what is the respectful action in the moment.

Now Mom sits sullen, refusing every supplement. It is ironic as she takes the medications which have proven ineffective in slowing her decline, but now refuses the supplements which have returned some semblance of her personality. But I step back, I yield.

My mother introduced me to natural supplements decades ago, but she left them behind in the busyness of her stressful life. Also ironic is the fact that she worked as a caregiver, unselfishly giving her all to her clients whose needs ranged from the feebleness associated with old age to Multiple Sclerosis, then to clients with Alzheimer’s and finally a client who required round-the-clock care.

When other aides ‘no-showed’ for work, Mom would sleep in makeshift cots to accommodate the family’s desire for 24-hour hands-on care. She would often work several successive 24-hour shifts, napping in straight-backed chairs awaiting the buzz of the machines to change out bags of fluids throughout the night. Meanwhile her client slept through the night hooked up to…