Five Years Later, My Soul Still Cries

One night last week I woke up on the floor of my bedroom sobbing. Alzheimer’s disease is so mean. This dream was so real I can still feel the pain.

Walking into the memory unit with my father in tow, I feel the angst of not knowing what greeting we’ll get from mom this morning. Will she know us? More importantly, will she know dad? I’m not saying that it doesn’t hurt when she looks through me like I’m a stranger. But it destroys me when my father gets that response from mom. She has been his everything, the cornerstone of his life and successes, for more than 60 years. She has been the wind beneath his wings. So as we approach the big window to the activities room, and I spot mom, I begin to say a silent prayer that she sees him and smiles her big bright smile.

My father is silent, almost holding his breath, as we approach the window. I can practically feel his excitement at seeing her. But he’s very tentative as he stays close to me, behind my left side. It feels like he’s shielding himself behind me, anticipating the hurt and disappointment of not being recognized. We get right up to the glass and I’m smiling at mom. She looks happy and engaged in the craft activity. And as if on cue, she looks over at us. I hold my breath for a second and let it out as she stands up straight and beams with glee as she spots my father.

Dad sees the spark of happiness, charges for the door and, before I know it, has my mother wrapped up in his arms. Like a flood of emotion I sink to my knees right there in the memory unit and start crying. There is no way of controlling these tears of joy and relief. Today she knows him and he will not suffer.

As I sit on the floor in the dark, I’m overwhelmed by a flood of memories of trying to cope myself while trying to help my father.

With Alzheimer’s disease, the loved ones feel the loss and the grief, quite often for many years. In my small family of three, my father and I felt the loss as my mother slipped away into her own world leaving us behind. I watched as my father tried to hang on to his wife, the love of his life. At the same time, I was struggling with my own loss of my mother, my confidant since early adulthood and my best friend. I became my father’s support and therapist of sorts during a time when I needed my own support and therapist. It felt like an impossible situation sometimes.

This dream reminded me of all the long distance counseling. I talked to my father probably five times per week. Some days he called to tell me how much fun they had going to the movie or the daily entertainment. Those days were happy. Other days my father would call and he was traumatized because mom didn’t know him or she didn’t want to go with him.

I am not a trained counselor.

Dad understood what was happening with mom’s Alzheimer’s on an intellectual basis, as we all do. But it’s the emotional trauma that overshadowed his ability to reason in any given instance. I tried to get him professional help but he wouldn’t talk to anyone. Confiding in his oldest and closest friends could have helped. I wanted dad to confide in his close friend Wimpy, a minister, who would counsel him spiritually and intellectually. They had been close friends since they were teenagers. But my father wouldn’t let anyone else into his emotional world. He was crumbling. And I couldn’t help him.

We lost my father quite suddenly in June of 2014. I went to visit for Father’s Day but ended up holding his hand while he slipped away from his suffering. I believe he lost his will to continue without my mother. He died leaving me to grieve alone as I realized that my mother was incapable of understanding. I elected not to tell her that her husband of 55 years had died and to this day, I never have.

I now understand with this experience that we don’t just suffer our own losses. Family members all have their own relationships with the Alzheimer’s patient and with each other. When we love our family members, we also empathize with their grief. My father struggled grieving for my mother and my soul still cries for him.