With a mother away for months,
her caregiver is unexpectedly sad
It’s been a week since Mom’s been gone. She’s in California, staying with my sister Natalie for five months. Natalie’s home on the “gold coast” of California is where Mom has been planning to spend this winter.
And why not? There, she wakes to a view of the ocean. She enjoys mild temperatures and daily golf cart rides around the property to visit the horses in their stables. She’ll get time with her four west coast children and their families. She’ll attend a granddaughter’s wedding and a grandson’s high school graduation.
This is a good thing. Everyone agrees, including Mom.
Then why am I still feeling so ambivalent about “sending her off?” I cried most of the day last week while cleaning her room and storing away her “equipment” – the shower chair, the walker, the bed railing. My sister Barb called me mid-day, feeling the same way. My other sister Theresa, who traveled with Mom, texted during their layover in Phoenix that Mom was doing great, but she was feeling “kind of sad.”
Mom moved in with me and my family last October. She agreed to move from her Clinton Township condo and put it up for sale. At my home, she had top-quality care during the day, my family lovingly took her in and my sisters remained very much involved in her care. Still, I knew having her live with me would be hard. Everyone told me it would. They encouraged me to take care of myself.
And they were right. It was hard. I’ve written about the challenges of taking care of a parent with dementia and other severe health issues. Reading, studying, talking to experts helps me understand intellectually what is going on and why.
But emotionally, it’s another story.
When your parent becomes your child, your parental instinct kicks in – but often without the joyfulness of being a parent. Since October, I’ve often felt whiplashed between periods of great satisfaction and periods of sadness – and yes – some resentment, too.
There’s no doubt I was looking forward to her going to California. I readily admitted I needed the break. Then why the weepy week?
“Did we do the right thing?” I asked Barbara when she called. “I don’t know,” she answered. “But you know what I’m afraid of? That she’s going to come back and not know us.”
Meanwhile, Natalie – on the other end of the line – couldn’t sound happier to have Mom with her. And Mom sounds quite pleased to be there.
“It’s so nice here,” Mom said when I talked to her mid-week. “I wish I could stay.”
“Mom,” I found myself almost whispering into the phone with a big lump in my throat. “You are staying.” Then I hung up and went and sat on her bed in my home office.
I know June will come quickly and she’ll be back. But today, this room, which for the past four months was stuffed with her clothes, wheel chair, empty oxygen tanks, is back to being my space – orderly and quiet.
It’s a good thing, right? For everyone. That’s what they say. But how do we really know what’s best for Mom? We don’t. We can only do what we believe is right.
Anne Marie Gattari is owner of BrightStar of Grosse Pointe / Macomb. Contact her via email.
