Love Remembers

She lost her husband in 2009. Things started to change shortly after. She lost her job, she wasn’t doing well in her new school, and she kinda just started acting a little different. We all thought it was just a stage of depression from losing the love of her life but little did we know it was a disgusting disease that slowly but surely took away her pride and independence. From starting off not being able to drive, to not being able to speak full sentences. Ending up in a memory care facility and not being able to do everyday simple life tasks. I watched her begin to go downhill with every little stage. My mom spent so many weeks moving from different facilities back into the hospital and just not having or knowing the place to call home. It came down to hospice, where she spent 2 weeks there before she passed away at 60 years old.

I wiped her tears when she didn’t know what to do, and I tried to feed her anything I could when she didn’t want to eat anymore. Before she lost her mobility we walked up and down the halls of the nursing home because of that’s what she wanted to do. I didn’t mind it, we did it for hours. I held her hand and told her how much I loved her and that everything would be okay one day. She lost everything, not knowing who she was anymore or anybody else, but most importantly why she was living like that. She just didn’t understand and I think that was the hardest part for all of us. She wanted so bad to be the healthy independent woman she was, but it just wouldn’t end up that way. The smartest most caregiving woman in the whole world, who was once a nurse had her life taken over by dementia. Its the hardest thing to watch your loved one slowly become someone you don’t even know anymore. But even when she couldn’t remember, I would never forget. We need a cure, we need more support and answers for this disease because too many loved ones are being taken away by something very few people know much about. It’s time to take a stand and be a voice to the ones who have suffered.