I'm fine

[sasha]

she sits in the dark
staring
seeing what I cannot
the tv cold and silent
she sits
surrounded by mail
she's no longer able to sort
so she keeps it all -
flyers
statements
solicitations
bills both due
and overdue
chaff and wheat
all the same...
yet in her dementia
she insists "I'm fine"

"I can stay here",
she says,
"as long as you set out my meds
take me shopping
pay my bills
clean my floors
dust my Things
do my laundry
make my bed...
I'm fine"

I try to tell her
she's not fine
she needs more help
than my sister and I can provide
even her doctors concur
ninety years old
going on ten
but no, she says...
"I'm fine"

[dadio]

My late mother had dementia in her last years. in her "world" she was fine too. Good capture.

[judih]

fine.
no problem
who are you
who am i

[saw]

tough thing to watch...even tougher to deal with...best of luck sorting it all out....the poem gives a clear look at the deterioration

[sasha]

dadio, judih, saw - thanks for taking note & commenting

The past six months have been difficult. She's impervious to reason, but canny enough to tell her nurses and doctors what she thinks they want to hear. It took a lot of wheedling and more than a little bullying to get her to admit that perhaps the time had come for assisted living, and miraculously enough we found one that she liked only 20 minutes from where I live. We moved her in last month, and she loves it there.

Cleaning out her apartment was another major hurdle - she's a hoarder. We had to engage a document destruction service to safely dispose of all the bank statements, canceled checks, utility bills, & expired mortgage agreements, some dating back to the 1970s. The bill for my dad's funeral - in 1988. The service agreement for the fuel delivery company they employed in 1982. The bill of sale for the house in 1991. There were trinkets she'd long forgotten about, but once she saw them again they became her most precious, prized possessions. We had to go behind her back to get that place cleaned out by the end of May, when her lease expired. We just made the deadline, but it was exhausting. Some hard feelings still linger.

It was also an object lesson. Hoarding is at least partly genetic - and it struck me that when I fall off the perch, my daughter is going to be faced with disposing of my 40-year collection of Scientific Americans, my reel-to-reel tapes, my 16-bit DOS software manuals, and my college notebooks filled with theorems named after dead white physicists. I've started hauling boxes of this crap off to the landfill every week, and bought a higher-end paper shredder for the financial documents. I don't want Becky to go through what my sister and I just did. And it's actually kind of liberating.

[leafsailors ghost]

Wow, went through the same story about a year ago , grandma moved in with us ,and only at the last went to a rest home , it was a long hard rain that fell that last year , 92 is a long count, I still see her about at the odd hour, the poem catches the feelings very well for me.

[beekay]

As much as I'd really like to say, "It'll be OK", it won't. The only thing you can do is try to make her life as easy as possible for the time she has left. After that, dealing with the memories. After that, facing the inevitable yourself...

[Doreen Peri]

I have a connection to this. My mother died of dementia in 2014. It wasn't easy. I know what you're going through. Thank you for sharing your heart. Many supportive thoughts for strength and resolve while you and your family go through this with your mom. Much love to you all!

[sasha]

leaf, beekay, doreen - thanks for your supportive vibes. This has been a difficult, emotional journey, but she's getting the care she needs and my sister and I are getting our own lives back underway. There are still some financial issues to be ironed out, but they're not time-critical, and I'm making some headway (I think). And I can actually see parts of the floor in my spare room...!

Again, thanks so much to all who've offered their thoughts.