Endearing Love and Gratitude
November 2024 Issue
Inspirations for Better Living
Some Novembers make it easy to be thankful while others work your last nerve. This year November is the latter for me and Mom. The awkwardness and struggles of parent child role reversal are hard enough without tossing in cognitive decline. That’s where Mom and I are now. Her gradual loss of physical and mental abilities has sped up. She’s eighty-five so I suppose I should have known this was coming.
You can’t know for sure though because it varies from person to person. Mom’s best friend is ninety and her cognitive skills are hanging in there. She and Mom live in a senior independent living apartment complex and I’m eternally grateful that they have each other. I’m also thankful that Mom lives about ten minutes from my house which will help us both remain independent for a while, but I’m beginning to wonder how much longer.
Mom had a surgical procedure to replace her pacemaker battery, and she isn’t bouncing back from it as well as I would like. The incision looks good to my untrained eye. Well, it looks as good as a wound can look and the nurses who’ve seen it say it looks normal. Her behavior worries me more than the wound. She’s just out of it, spacy and disoriented, especially when she first wakes up. At least I don’t have to worry about her hopping in the car while she’s so foggy headed.
I’m thankful she decided to give up driving earlier this year, but it seems like that may have been a catalyst for depression and faster mental decline. Or it could be coincidental timing. I don’t know because I’m not a doctor and I haven’t dealt with this type of situation before. All I really know is what I see and what her friends tell me. She sleeps a lot more than she used to, so her eating schedule is almost nonexistent these days. I don’t think that helps. Nutrition is fuel for the body, and the mind is part of the body. Right?
It's getting harder for both of us to stay positive and we each feel helpless for a different reason. Mom feels helpless because she doesn’t have the physical strength and agility to do all the things she used to be able to do on her own like cleaning the house and taking out the trash. She has family and friends who will help her with chores and drive her wherever she needs to go, but she doesn’t like asking any of us for help. I feel helpless because I haven’t figured out a way to make her golden years more enjoyable.
