The LONG goodbye began for my family in 2007. My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2007. She helped me at my craft shows for 27 years. In October of 2006, we were in Longmont Colorado selling my angel pins at Mollie McGee's Market. We always used my mom's calculator to add up order totals. I had gone to the restroom and left my mom to check out customers which she had done many times. A friend came into the restroom to tell me that my mom couldn't get the calculator to work, was very flustered and had a long line of customers waiting to check out. I hurried back to my booth and asked what was wrong. The light on the calculator was on but she said she couldn't make it work. It ended up that she wanted it to print and couldn't remember that all she needed to do was to turn on the "PRINT" button. I was concerned because like I said before, it was her calculator and we had used it for years.
A few weeks later I had sent a batch of angel pins that I had made over to her to price like she had done many times before. She had a cheat sheet to use for pricing them. She would put them on cards and then add the number and the price. When I picked them up, they were all wrong. She had gotten confused and couldn't match the pin to the picture. My heart sank! I asked my dad and he concurred that he also had noticed a few things.
My mom always hosted Thanksgiving. That year, we were ready to sit down to eat Thanksgiving dinner and she realized she had forgotten to make the mashed potatoes. Another sign that something wasn't right. She was very upset. So we put dinner on hold while we made the mashed potatoes.
We talked to her about her symptoms and she got angry. She told us we were over-reacting. We finally convinced her to get tested. The doctor did the blood test for Alzheimers and it came back that she had the gene. He said that if you have the gene, they call it Alzheimers. If you don't, they call it dementia.
She would get angry with my dad and I when we’d try to talk to her about it. And so the LONG goodbye began. She slowly stopped doing everything that she had been so involved in for so long. She stopped doing things with her friends and driving most places. She stopped caring for her yard and her house. She stopped cooking all our favorite things. Nothing was funny anymore and for those of you who know my dad, well---that was one of the hardest things for him. He has always been a jokester, and she no longer thought anything was funny. She became very opinionated and was short with my dad and I because we were the ones who insisted she go to the doctor. She must have heard the doctor say that doing word puzzles could possibly help because she spent the last years of her life spending her days circling words in word search puzzles all day long while holding her cat. She was perfectly content to have the lights off, the tv off, and to sit there and circle words day after day.
She lived at home with my dad until 2 years ago. The last two years she was at home, we had home health care come in every day to help. We moved my mom to a memory care facility in September of 2022. She seems content there, which I am so grateful for because she DID NOT want to go there. It's so hard every time I leave her there, because most of the time she is just sitting there staring out of the window. It breaks my heart. But she always tells me she loves me when I leave her and I always say "See you later alligator." And she always responds "After while crocodile."
She has broken her hip, has congestive heart failure, had covid, and her oxygen level runs in the 60's and 70's but none of those have taken her life yet. She's like the Energizer Bunny. She just keeps going and going. My mom was always a very strong woman.
I decided I wanted to make an angel pin to honor my mom and others fighting the terrible disease of Alzheimers and dementia. I researched it and found that the forget-me-not is a small blue flower that is the symbol for Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. It represents remembrance and memory loss. I found a little forget-me-not flower charm that would work perfect for my Alzheimer's angel pin. I hand painted the little blue flower and nestled it in the wings of the angel pin I decided to use. I pinned one on my jean jacket and wear it everywhere I go. I honor her and carry a little piece of her with me all the time.
Many of my friends' parents have been diagnosed and already passed. I don't why God has allowed my mom to live so long with this awful disease. We’ve all wondered why God allowed this to happen to someone like our mom. Why did her and my dad have those golden years of traveling and spending time together growing old together taken away? Why was she not allowed to enjoy my grandchildren like my grandparents enjoyed us? Why didn’t my grandkids get to know that she was such a fun grandma?
I don’t have a good answer to any of those questions, but I heard an interview given by the singer Amy Grant whose parents both had severe dementia. She said some things that had a big impact on me. One night she opened up to a trusted friend expressing her frustration and her sense of loss. The friend told her, "Amy, this is going to be the greatest walk of faith you'll ever have. You can't see the whole picture now, but each day you're going to have to trust God more than you ever have before. "Day by day you will find the inspiration you need, and you'll see how God is present in each moment. And then came the words that changed everything: "I know this is hard, but this will be the last great lesson you'll learn from your parents."
As we’ve gone on this journey with our mom, we’ve tried to keep those thoughts in our mind. What lessons did we learn: patience, tolerance, to be thankful for what she could do and remember—and not focus on what she couldn’t do or remember. We learned to take life one day at a time. And so the LONG goodbye continues. Only God knows when it will end. I cherish each and every day I have with her even if it's just holding her hand.
My heart aches for each and every one of you that has gone through this or is in the process of the LONG goodbye. May God guide and comfort each one of you.
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