Ringing the Bell, Tapping Out, Crying Uncle

Whatever you want to call it, I am throwing in the towel.

Tomorrow Myrtle is moving into a facility where we hope she can get more of the kind of support she needs and wants – where we hope she will be happier.   For many, many days I have felt like a quitter.  It goes without saying that caring for Myrtle is the single hardest thing I've ever done.  And I don't usually quit.  Until now.

Here's the thing.

Myrtle is doing well, all things considered.  In my home she has gotten much better food and nutrition. She is wheeled outside in the sunshine for a walk almost every day and often two or three times a day.  She gets more attention to hygiene matters and she has a spectacularly beautiful view from every window.  Art supplies, great picture books, and access through Netflix to all of her beloved nature documentaries.  She is hugged and she is loved.   And, you know what?   She wants to be somewhere else.   She wants to be where there are other people like her.

Every morning at breakfast she looks around and says:  "Where are all the other people?"   She is used to sitting in rooms lined with old folks sitting, chattering or napping, or scooting around in their walkers or wheelchairs.   Every day it is clear to me how lonely she is.  This is probably the single thing which I am unable to change.  I can’t fix her loneliness.

She is stronger and healthier than when she first came to my home.  True.  

Yet, all she wants is to sit in a circle with other old folks, have confusing chats, laugh at nothing in particular, complain about the food, and peacefully watch the dust settle onto the tops of chairs and the sweatered shoulders there.   

She is looking for her people, and, in a way, her humanity, threadbare though it may be.  She does not want the unique comforts and beauty of her home in Medford.  She does not really want what I have constructed.  

“Where are the people?” she asks.  

“Where are the others like me?” she wants to know, every day.  

“I want to go where all the others are,” she tells me.

I am either ringing the bell on my own foolish goals to cheat dementia of its full claim on my mother or I am simply ringing the bell on her stay here with my family, which has not been easy – not for one minute.   I’m just not sure which it is.  

I will visit her often, but I will miss her presence here.  I love you, mom.