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PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
2015 (at the beginning of the disease)
a little insight into the dynamic of caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s.
Now, I have friends and acquaintances who have a spouse
or loved one diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It seems that
every patient with the disease develops differently. Their personality, mental acuity, and physical well-being seem
to diminish at different rates over time. My Mom’s slightly reliant and then dependent phase began about 2+ years before her death. I have heard of others lingering for a decade or more. But, that short 2+ year time brought our family, in some ways, closer to caring for our parents. While there were constant frustrations, we all knew that Mom’s illness made her incapable of knowing better. The farther she progressed into the darkness that she spent nearly her last year of life, the more and more we would make an effort to do anything to nudge a smile from her or even a sincere gaze. While words from her were few, when they came, they were priceless. My Mom died on December 18, 2018. Her mind and body were ravaged by a cruel disease that was unrelenting and determined.
Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s requires extraordinary patience and understanding. In our case, we were able to manage my Mom’s care mostly with my Dad and my very “devoted sisters,” [one of whom lived close by] but also with “in-home” assistance as well. It has to be a family effort if possible. With Mom, it would have been unthinkable for my Dad to place her in some memory care facility, but there are
other situations where the care and even safety of the loved one must be there. There is no “cookie-cutter” approach
to caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease. Every situation is as different as a “snowflake.” In our situation, we were focused as much on caring for the caregiver as we were “the patient” and managed to pull off that balance reasonably well. When the disease showed its ugly side, we had assumed the approach that we were now taking care of a child with very similar needs. Then, when the disease is all-consuming, it is genuinely taking care of someone dependent.
My account of events is unique to us [our family], and there has never been a short supply of regrets since Mom’s death. There is no authoritative “textbook” on personally caring for your particular family member with Alzheimer’s disease. It is truly a “learn as you go” process since the patient and the resources will always be different, and patients require different responses and resources. Suppose you are caring for a parent or loved one with Alzheimer’s. In that case, you will likely get to “the end,” or that time when your care stops and you look back with some regrets, and my only advice
to most would be to make sure that you fill that time with
as many fond memories as those times where challenges were frequent because the challenges will sometimes be daunting. At the end of the process, your memory of YOU should be that “I did my best” for that loved one- forget the challenging days and fill your memory with fondness of your long-term relationship with that loved one. My memory
of my mom is that I had the best that God could have supplied. The challenges were there, and they will be there while caring for that loved one, but no matter the difference in circumstances, be able to look back on that process with fondness, having “honored” your mother and [or] your father! Ex. 20:12
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Bill Whitfield is a Shareholder with Copeland Cook Taylor & Bush
in Gulfport, MS. Contact him at: bwhitfield@wewiii.net.