My mother passed away on in early February 2020 after a more than seven-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. I believe the disease showed up earlier, but I did not catch it, when she visited me in July 2012 and already showed early signs of memory loss. Throughout the awful journey, her husband since 1987 took care of her with amazing love and grace.
I watched my mom’s trajectory erode gradually through the glimpses I had during usually twice-yearly visits. My step-dad would set the times when he was comfortable with my trips, and I did what I could to travel from the Northwest to St. Louis when these windows arrived.
Each time I visited my mom’s home in St. Louis, her memory would have slipped a little further from the last trip. Her eyesight began faltering too. She had issues with her balance because of the Alzheimer’s medication she took to control the effects of the awful disease. I observed changes to her weight as well and how she looked.
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As the years progressed, I became more accustomed to repetitive conversations that revealed how this dreaded illnesses destroyed her cognitive functions. I lost count of how many times we discussed why I didn’t live closer.
“Where are you now,” she’d say.
“I live in Portland, mom,” I’d reply.
“Why do you live out there,” she’d say.
“Because I work out there and my friends are there, mom,” I would reply.
“That’s too far away,” she’d say, noting her displeasure.
“I know it is, mom. I’m sorry.”
“Why can’t you see me more often,” she’d ask.
“Because I live 2,000 miles away,” I’d reply.
“Where do you live,” she’d ask.
“I live in Portland,” I’d reply.
“That’s far away, isn’t it,” she’d ask.
“Yes mom, it’s far away.”
Variations of this conversations occurred on each trip, except the second to last one in late January 2020, a few weeks before her will to live slipped away in an extended living care facility where she was moved in December 2019, after another hospital visit.
My step-dad’s call telling me that Alzheimer’s had finally won its long battle inside my mother’s brain came around 4 a.m. in early February. Family gathered for her funeral a week later. I felt a mix of sadness and exhausted relief that this journey had finally ended, especially for her caregiver husband, who had performed heroics on a daily basis, year after year.
I looked back at my writings over the many years. I had compiled a journal that captured my impressions and also words I had shared with family and friends over the course of my mom’s illness. I wrote this on the flight coming back to Portland on the last visit when I saw my mom alive in late January 2020. It’s a description of the last hour with her, when a minister led a church service in the extended care facility’s activity and dining room:
Mom started curling up to the side, wanting to sleep again. I ran to her room and grabbed a pillow to give her something more comfortable than a wooden chair arm to rest her head on. The minister, having finished her service, sat at the piano and began to play hymns. She played and sang How Great Though Are, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Down by the Riverside, Amazing Grace, and other hymns I didn’t recognize immediately. At that moment I couldn’t think of a better thing to be doing for those here, and for visitors like me.
I began crying while the minister and older African American sang Amazing Grace. This was it. This was the end. I knew right then I would never see my mom alive again. My eyes were turning red and I wiped tears on my red Marmot jacket.
I told my mom I was leaving. She smiled and asked where I was going. I said, Portland, mom. I’m going to Portland. She smiled. I don’t know if she heard me. I blew her a kiss, not wanting to give her my minor throat illness. Then I got I got a nurse’s aide to punch in the security code to open the secure elevator to leave.
Alone, I started to cry. I mostly kept up my straight-face appearances in the lobby as I signed up. Once out the sliding doors in the small parking lot, I bent over and wept. It has been years since I had a cry like this. I must have been a pitiful sight to someone looking out a window.
Get it together, I said. Rudy, get your act together. I got in the car and then cried more. I turned the ignition and began to leave the parking lot, still crying.
From that bag of endurance tricks I picked up over the years, I pulled out my stoic shell and contained the emotion. It’s the face I show the world, even when things go very, very, very bad.
I turned my rental car onto Forest Park Parkway, turned north on Interstate 170, and headed to St. Louis International Airport. I knew this was the last time I would see my mom while she was still on the journey of life.
Though my mother’s passage is still ongoing, I know it won’t be for much longer. It is time to prepare for the inevitable rituals of memory, remembrance, and a search for meaning at the end that inevitably waits us all.