My Mother's Last Days - July 21, 2015

I won't be able to write for the next few days. I'm headed to girls' camp and technology is banned, happily by leaders, not so happily by the girls. I couldn't get a signal anyway - Camp Shalom is 10,000 feet and coverage is poor for cell companies. So it's easy to be obedient and I want to focus on my girls anyway.

My mother continues to decline. She moans incessantly and makes little sense when she speaks. She's talked of her parents being dead, of my dad dying, of a baby boy being born dead, of frogs, fire engines and how she'd be better off dead which is really the only sensible (in that it makes sense, not that I agree) thing she says besides "I love you." She gets agitated easily and the volume of her moaning rises if you try to adjust her head or feet or make other changes. I've heard her moans as I've stepped in the front door of the care center and mom's door was closed. Her room is quite far from the front door.

One aide gave her lorazepam and morphine on top of each other last weekend. It knocked my mom out and the aide achieved her goal - to have my mom be quiet. We complained and she was removed from med tech duty and banned from my mother's room. My mom continues to moan. There is a man who lives at the care center. He moves about in a motorized wheelchair. He eats his meals alone. I'm not sure of his ailment but he can speak slowly and be understood. One day this week he heard my mom moaning and he took a stuffed bear to her. I thanked him today for it. He slowly explained he heard her crying out a lot. He wanted to help.

Some people help by being tender and patient, holding her hand and telling her it will be alright. It sometimes soothes my mom but most often she remains agitated until she is given some authorized meds. I don't understand her moaning. I get frustrated and wonder why it doesn't bother her to listen to it go on and on. Does it help her to moan? Is it a comfort to her? The Latin meaning of dementia is "to depart one's mind." I know her mind is still there. She sometimes talks to us like she used to, even joking at very rare times. But what is it that descends over her mind to disconnect thoughts, blanket with a fog or trigger moaning? I hate dementia. It's one of the most unfair, awful, frustrating diseases humans have to endure. And I don't understand how and why my mom was targeted. We have longevity on both sides of the family - people who lived to be over 100 and they were coherent to the end. Why does my mom have to suffer this horrible end to her wonderful life? Perhaps we'll know when we move through the veil to the other side. I know she'll be happy to find out once she gets there. It will be sooner than later, of that I'm sure.