What do you do?

When you learn that a loved one, say your mom, has Alzheimer's, what do you do?

First, you cry. It's so hard to think about the person you admire so much is going to slowly slip away from you without dying. The shell will still be there and even if she does say, "When I don't know you any more, don't come to visit. I'll be gone."

Wow. Mom said that to me once. And it was from the heart. Sometimes when she says things I know it's not really what she means. But she meant that one. I don't think I can ever stop going to see her, though. No. My prayers are that God will not let her be completely taken over by Alzheimer's, that He'll let her stay where she is at this moment of the disease's progression until the day she dies. That it will never completely rob us of her.

My brothers wanted to deny that AD had entered the picture. I accepted it pretty quickly because I had to accept it in order to start looking for ways to help her, to slow down the progression, prevent it if I could, but to embrace it and look for answers, to be there for her with knowledge that could help her. There was no time to lose, especially as I looked back and saw all the red flags we had missed early on. They were there...but the changes were so gradual, so subtle. Unnoticeable until we looked back.

My knee-jerk reaction was that I had to step in immediately and take over the handling of Mom and Dad's affairs. It wasn't that I was trying to be controlling and bossy. It was that I wanted to help them. Mom wanted to stay independent, to live in their house until she dies. I thought I had to immediately get to work to make that happen. It took awhile for me to understand that they will ask for help when they need me. They will accept help when I offer it at the times that I can plainly see that they need me.

That's another thing. I have to be so alert to their words, their expressions, the look in Mom's eyes when she doesn't want to admit that she needs help. And when I'm not there all the time, when days pass before I go back to visit, I lose touch and don't know what they need. And they feel like I've abandoned them. I don't know how to take care of things at my home and their home at the same time. I don't know how to be everywhere at once.

Is that why I've taken to hiding away in my office? Away from everyone and everything? Why doesn't anyone understand what I need? If I go to my parents' house, I neglect things that need to be done at my house. If I stay home, I am not around when they need me and they don't want to bother me because I "have so much on your plate." And if someone else needs something from me, I feel that much more stress and guilt because I can't cover all the bases and I have no one willing to take up my slack.

But they don't want to move to my house. And their house isn't big enough for us to move there. Maybe next year when one daughter is living at the college and the other is married and the newlyweds can live here with the dogs and cats and DH and I can live with my parents. I don't know.

What do you do? You take one day at a time. You do the best you can with today. And all the todays after this one.