Moving Mom to memory care

Array

Array Array Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

She had been living alone at the family homestead — the home my grandparents owned when I was a boy — for all sixteen of those years after Dad died. But without us noticing, Mom began to slide into…well, the doctors cannot tell us what she was sliding into. But it was something like dementia.

That summer, we realized that she was having problems.

• Her schizophrenia exploded. (She insisted the neighbors were firing guns at all hours. They didn’t own a gun. She reported conversations and events that never took place. And so on.)
• She became unable to take her medication reliably. (She’d miss doses or, more often, take a day’s worth of doses at once. Sometimes two days.)
• Plus, she was what the medical folks call “non verbal”. That is, she couldn’t communicate what she was thinking and feeling. (Except on those random rare occasions when she could carry on a nearly-normal conversation.)

The final straw came when Mom drove her car through the back of the garage. My brothers and I knew then that something had to be done. And when the doctors told us they couldn’t explain what was wrong, we made the difficult decision: We found a memory care facility with an open spot and moved her in.

Mom didn’t like the memory care unit at Happy Acres. She shared her apartment with another resident. Mom wanted privacy. She didn’t like the social activities. She wanted to sit alone in her room and watch the Home Shopping Network. She wanted her cats. (She had two cats when she was living on the family homestead.)

Within a few months, the staff at Happy Acres recommended that we move her upstairs to a private apartment outside the memory care space. That’s where she’s lived for the past ten years. She’s had two large rooms to herself. She spends most of her time watching the Home Shopping Network (still), but for a long time she seemed to enjoy going downstairs at mealtimes, sitting in the same chair at the same table with the same people.

Mom missed her cats, though, so before Kim and I left for our year-long RV trip in 2015, I drove her to the Humane Society. There, she chose a cat. (And the cat chose her.) For seven years, sweet little Bonnie has been Mom’s closest companion. She loves that beast, and the beast loves her.

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array Array Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array

Array Array Array

Array

Array

Array Array Array Array