Page 50 - Aging Parents - FDCCPublications

PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
Mom and me, 2010
We traveled down to Florida one weekend in July 2019,
and Murry asked to go out to dinner with us. This was
after he was wheelchair-bound, and we had stopped asking him to join us for dinner because we could not get him in
or out of a vehicle. We took him to the Capital Grille, and he thoroughly enjoyed his meal of surf, turf, and wine. He passed in his sleep that night. We arranged the funeral while driving to the airport to travel back to New York. We then attended our first FDCC meeting a week and a half later.
Lesson four: Life is for the living. No matter how hard the situation, you must continue to live your life. Don’t forget that you still have a spouse, children, and work.
At the same time Murry began to deteriorate, I watched
my Mom, Honey, start to “lose”—glasses, cell phone, keys .
. . and then words. She lost her way to a shopping mall in Florida one winter when I visited—and Honey loved to shop and never lost her way! She also began retelling stories from my youth with embellishments I did not remember. She left her keys in the car and left the car running at the clubhouse. Then, she called my Dad (Stu), crying because she could not find her keys to come home.
Despite being preoccupied with Murry, Andy and I took time to speak with my brother (also an attorney) and my dad, first gently suggesting and then, after the car incident, perhaps not so gently advising that Honey needed to see a neuropsychologist for testing. They resisted repeatedly.
Honey and Stu, 2009
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Murry, Roz, and Andy, 2004
Return to Lesson One - you must have difficult conversations.
It took a number of those difficult conversations, during which we were met with denial after denial after denial, until finally, in April 2018, Stu finally took her for testing. The diagnosis? Short-term memory loss. Etiology? Unknown. Treatment: exercise the mind and body. But Honey already did that: she played bridge, did crossword puzzles, practiced chair yoga, and walked.
Christmas - or Chanukah for us - 2019 - was the last time I remember her conscious of the world around her. Sure, the word loss was more prominent. But she prepared dinner and went clothes shopping, although this time I drove!