caregiving – Page 3 – Laura Stavoe

August 14, 2020August 14, 2020

We’re Here

Tending to Endings (thirty-two)

Are you taking care of yourself?

This is a question friends, acquaintances and even strangers would ask me after learning I was a caregiver for my mom. Everyone was aware of statistics about how stressful caregiving is on the health of the caregiver. This is especially true of spouses of Alzheimer’s patients for which the trajectory of decline is often long with care needs increasing with time. For years, I had been asking my dad the same question.

When I left my job to live with my parents to help with my mom’s care after her cancer returned, I no longer knew how to answer the question honestly and succinctly. Do you mean have I eaten or showered in the last few days? Well, yes, probably. Do you mean am I physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in balance? Of course not, and it would take too much energy to explain why that is not possible. During those days, a trip to the grocery store was self-care. It offered a change of scenery and time for a short phone call to a friend outside of the walls of the condo.

I have numerous friends who are primary caregivers for a spouse or parent, and I have been worried about them during these COVID times. They are caring for people who are already in fragile health and so they are more isolated than usual. They don’t have anyone coming in to give them a break. They are not able to go to yoga or play tennis; they can’t have company over for visits. Groceries have to be delivered! There is no break.

Ana and Patty were always only a phone call away when I was caring for my mom.

Early in March, my friend Debbie received word from her dad that her stepmom had cancer that would require six weeks of radiation therapy in Colorado. By the time Debbie arrived to help, Colorado was already on lockdown. The medical situation was dire and my interactions with Debbie were only through occasional texts. She sent pictures showing the snowstorm that almost kept them from radiation therapy.

I was worried about my friend and longed to talk with her, but she had little time for phone and her step mom could not be left alone. COVID protocols meant others couldn’t be called in to help.

Debbie texted me,

As soon as I get a chance, I’m going to cry. But it will have to be after a split feeding, a doctor appointment and the last feeding after which I need to keep my stepmom upright for thirty minutes while she is miserable because all wants to do is go to bed.

Oh how I understood that place. I sent my friend hearts and let her know I loved her.

Debbie has been home since mid-May and her stepmom is recovering well. The crisis has passed. When I asked Debbie about caregiving during COVID, she answered by comparing it to another time she was a primary caregiver at the end of her Mom’s life.

I’m not sure this will be helpful but what I felt this time was that the whole world had similar feelings as I was having, albeit for different reasons. This time, I didn’t feel so alone. When taking care of my mom, I felt isolated because others lived as though nothing had changed. For me, everything had changed.

It reminds me that I never know the particulars of a caregiving experience except for my own. I have a tendency to fill in the details with the worst possible scenarios. Debbie’s experience was full of difficulties and graces, too, much like my time with my mom.

Friends from work made a poem book for me to carry with me when I went to care for my mom. I treasure it still.

I’m not a fan of articles that tell you what to say in difficult situations as though we can short-cut our way to empathy. Whether Are you taking care of yourself comes across as a loving question or a pat cliché has to do with context and tone and whether I’ve had enough sleep.

But what is true for me is that I would rather my friends ask pat questions than back away out of worry about saying the wrong thing. Whether they say the right or wrong thing is not going to change the gravity of the situation. But their presence in my life, even from the sidelines, can make all the difference in how supported I feel.

At times I have been that friend who has backed away. I told myself I was giving my friend privacy (without asking if that was what she wanted). Usually that distance was born of fear. As a result, I have missed opportunities to learn, to grow, to be a friend.

Sometimes being a friend to someone in dire circumstances is difficult not because there is so much to do, but because there is not much that can be done. I couldn’t give Debbie what I thought she needed most, which was a break and some rest. I often felt like I was bugging her when I would ask things like have you been able to go for a walk? And I felt like the words I had to offer were far too small to match her situation.

It doesn’t always feel helpful to stay in touch with someone during critical times. But looking back at Debbie’s and my long thread of texts which sometimes were despairing and sometimes philosophical and sometimes funny—texts that sometimes involved her telling me, no, she really could not fit in a walk that day—I am very grateful we stayed in touch.

There are definite advantages to having young mom friends who can send photos like this one of Josie! Photo Credit: Jenna Petrykowski.

During the last months of my mom’s life, when my father and I were living in the caregiving bubble that sometimes felt like chaos and other times like a cocoon, I had no energy for friendships. And yet, I needed my friends more than ever.

And now thinking back to that time, I see my friends as being central to how I got through. They sent cards and texts and voice mails. They responded to the sunset photo I sent them with hearts. They answered when I called on my walk and let me spill my sadness and exhaustion into the short time we had to talk together. They sent me poems and really good pears; they took online Scrabble turns late into the night; they sent photos of their babies they knew would make me smile.

What I needed from my friends during that time was not privacy so much as grace. I had very little to give. Still, my friends stayed. They were thousands of miles away, and yet I remember them as being with me in that cocoon of a condo during that sacred time. It made all the difference that they kept reaching out, each saying, one way or another, we are here.

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May 29, 2020July 16, 2020

Drawing Near

Tending to Endings (twenty-two)

It was an expedition to get down to the pool. Mom hadn’t left the condo for a couple weeks, but that morning she wanted to go outside.

We moved slowly. My mom was forgetting how to walk, so I had to help keep the momentum going by gently pulling the walker. We inched along. I didn’t care how long it took, except that if she changed her mind, it would be the same production to get her back and she might not be happy about it.

But we made it to the lounge chairs and then there was the process of helping her to sit. She no longer understood the mechanics of sitting, and she found the process of letting herself down onto the chair unsettling. If I held her around her waist in a hug and bent my knees she would sometimes follow my lead. We tried this and after a long awkward dance she was in the chair and I was able to raise her feet and turn her towards the pool and to the blue ocean water and the sky. She squinted in the sun.

And then I looked up and saw that the small groups of others in the pool area were watching us. Kindly. One woman put her hand on her chest as she made eye contact with me. Her eyes were teary. And I realized, my mother and I were a story. I was the daughter taking care of my elderly mother with tenderness. I was that special kind of person. They weren’t sure they could do it.

Or that is how I might’ve seen the story in the past, before I went to live with my parents for six months. There are certain kinds of people who have an extra something and are able to show patience and compassion for caregiving. These special people are good at such things, saints really.

One of my biggest insights about being a caregiver is that it meant feeling like a failure (not a saint) most of the time. I certainly couldn’t cure cancer or Alzheimer’s and very few decisions seemed clear cut. Even things I had thought I was clear on like honesty and autonomy were thrust into a gray zone. It was very difficult to get my bearings.

What worked one day, changed the next, and much of the time I didn’t know what to do to help my mom on a day to day basis. More pain medication or less? Do we bring in extra nursing help she doesn’t want? Do we tell her she has cancer every time she forgets? Is it time for hospice yet? Do we bring her to another doctor appointment where she will experience pain on the off chance he’ll be able to help? Do we talk her into going on walks? Eating less ice cream? Does it matter? Are we giving up if we say it doesn’t matter?

Sometimes I felt like my main accomplishment was being there so my father didn’t have to bear all these confusing decisions alone. I didn’t have clear answers for him, but at least we could be confused together which meant less loneliness, and I think maybe less guilt. I could reassure him that no matter what decision we made it was going to feel wrong.

My time as a full-time caregiver was short compared to the time put in by many others including my father. I had his support and also, often, my sisters and my aunt. Even with a crew it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Probably the hardest. I didn’t always do it gracefully or well.

Yes, it made a difference to my parents that I was there. But more than that, I think it helped me. It helped me process and accept and let go and love in a way that I believe would’ve been more complicated otherwise.

If I hadn’t drawn close, I would only have known the trauma of Alzheimer’s and cancer, which are horrible even from a distance. But I would have missed seeing my mom wake up each day and drink her coffee and talk with my dad. I would have missed her laughing when she spotted egrets. I would’ve missed our Scrabble games.

And those rare moments she sounded just like herself again through the fog of Alzheimer’s. Like the day I had to explain to her once again that she had cancer because she forgot and didn’t understand why she was in such intense pain. She must’ve heard a sadness in my voice because she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Oh, Laura. I’ve had such a good life. Things aren’t doled out fairly you know, and I have gotten far more than my share. I’m not going to let a little pain in my bottom make me forget that.”

I would not have known that being a caregiver isn’t a role but a relationship. Which means I also receive. Which means I also irritate, and laugh with, and know this other person. A knowing in this case that was full of loss, but also full of intimacy. It was a time we experienced together.

I would not have known that after weeks of not wanting to leave the condo, my mom would suddenly one day look to me and say, “Why don’t we go outside and sit by the pool?” Or that when did our long dance to the chair, I wouldn’t think of it as anything other than spending time with my mother.

Thank you for reading Tending to Endings. If you would like to subscribe, please leave your name and email below. If you have questions or feedback, you can reach me at laura@laurastavoe.com. Tending to Endings is ad-free and cost free, and I will not share you email. My hope is to help build community and conversation around end-of-life matters.

May 8, 2020June 14, 2020

Not Knowing

Tending to Endings (nineteen)

It’s been strange these past couple months because while on one hand I have been reeling with everyone else with the rapid fire pace of Covid-19 and how it has dismantled much of everyday life, on the other hand, some of it feels familiar and like an extension of what started for me on November 6, 2018 when I took leave from my very busy job at a community college to go to Chicago to help my dad care for my mom.

Now that I have perspective on the arc of that story, I tend to forget that I saw my trip as fairly defined when I left Idaho for Chicago. Mom’s health was deteriorating due to Alzheimer’s, and she had painful wounds from radiation after her second bout with vulvar cancer. My dad and my sisters had taken her to specialists and the wounds still were not healing. She had even ended up at the emergency room. Also, my dad was recovering from hip replacement surgery.

My plan was to stay with my parents until they were both well enough to travel to their winter home in Maui, and then I’d help them get settled there and return home. I had a goal and twelve weeks of family medical leave if needed.

Just before I arrived, a doctor recommended a hyperbaric oxygen therapy for my mom that sometimes helps treat radiation wounds. I arrived just in time. My assignment involved waking up at 5:15 each morning and driving to the hospital and talking a woman with Alzheimer’s into sitting in a large metal tube for two hours. The therapy would take 20-30 sessions, depending.

My dad and I do well with goals, and we proceeded like we were training for a marathon. We marked each treatment on the calendar and sent each other high-five emojis from the hospital when Mom was safely in the chamber, the oxygen hissing into the capsule.

We overcame obstacles. An early snowstorm and icy roads closed the schools and kept all of the other patients and many hospital staff home one morning. But we made it, and waited for plows to free the chamber’s exhaust system from piles of snow so my mom could get her treatment. One morning my mom who was in pain didn’t want to get out of the tub, and my dad and I pleaded and bargained with her at the door until she finally said, “Fine, I know how important this is to the two of you.” And I helped her into her green scrubs while my dad brought the car around to the front of their condo building so we could make it just in the nick of time.

Weekend mornings we would stand over the calendar and calculate our progress. One day we saw were on target for making it to Maui before Christmas.

Only, my Mom’s pain wasn’t going away. Recently it had begun to seem worse. Her doctor prescribed stronger pain medication. Then, twenty-three treatments in and just after Thanksgiving, we took her to another specialist where we learned the cancer was back. My dad and I were deflated, defeated.

I’ve been thinking a lot about an essay I read recently by Elizabeth Outka published in the Paris Review about the literature of pandemics and particularly Kathrine Anne Porter’s, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, set during World War I and the influenza pandemic of 1918. The essay grapples with the questions of uncertainty the characters face in an ever changing situation. Outka writes,

The past is always another country, but the speed at which knowledge becomes outdated, naivete turns to realization, and basic truths change is dizzying during a pandemic. In “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” Porter wove her own paradigm-altering experience into a broader meditation on the vertigo induced by such shifts…
One’s reality doesn’t simply shift in a pandemic; it becomes radically uncertain—indeed, uncertainty is the reality. The unpredictability of the COVID-19 virus and all we don’t know about it means we have no idea where we are in the story or even what story we are in. Is this the first wave of something even deadlier to come? Have we reached the top of the curve? What’s the scope of the tragedy? Is the economy the real story? What do we think we know now that may prove fatally wrong? The narrative of uncertainty causes many of us to turn to genre fiction and predictable movies (even if they are about disaster)—they allow us to pull down another story like a shade and sit in a place where we already know the ending.

I don’t know if being a writer makes me more prone to wanting to figure out the whole story when I’m still in the middle, or whether it is just being human. Caregiving it seems is particularly prone to this state of not knowing. And my tendency in the middle of it all is to grasp at meaning, to try and see the whole picture, as though in figuring out the story, I will know how I will be able to stand it.

My mom’s story shifted many times over the next six months, and mine did too. I remember for a while after we had made it to Hawaii and my mom was on hospice care, there was a stretch of time when she was not sleeping well. She would wake up in the middle of the night and feel like she couldn’t get air. The nurse brought an oxygen machine and ordered anti-anxiety medication and Dad and I took turns staying up, walking around the condo with my mom holding her so she wouldn’t fall. None of it felt ok and we were low on sleep and we didn’t know if she would ever be able to rest again.

“It is not like a marathon,” I told my dad, “because in a marathon you always know what mile you are on.”

Caregiving is more like being in an open water ocean swim with no shore in sight. It is disorienting to not know how far you have to swim or how to pace yourself. You can’t even hope for the shore to come into view because when that happens, it also means, you will no longer have your mother.

One thing that helped me then and helps me now is admitting that my current job is not to try to figure out the whole story. It’s not, as my mind always initially tells me, to fix the catastrophe, whether it is a pandemic or cancer or Alzheimer’s. Maybe that should be obvious, but as soon as I am afraid for someone or something I love, old habits tend to rear their head.

Sometimes I think humility is the sleeper of superpowers. When I let go of the thing I cannot control and give into the reality of not knowing, I can ask the question: Ok, I guess my role here isn’t to fix or even to steer the whole global situation, so what is it?

Always I find something in front of me I can do with my particular skills and sphere of influence. Invariably, it feels too small for the conditions. Still, I can begin. Finding purpose buoys me, and I can swim.

I think now about my mom and I during one of those sleepless nights. It was 3:11 am when I awoke to the safety alarm and found her standing next to her bed, too agitated to sit much less sleep. She wasn’t having any of my reassurances. She wanted to go home (she was home). She wanted me to let her put on her shoes (we did, then undid). We leaned against each other, walking like two drunks around the condo, her balance gone due to dementia and me, groggy, and exhausted, but the more sober friend, holding her up.

I talked about the ocean and the moon. I rattled off stories from her childhood and hoped the medication would kick in. She asked me again and again to take her home. It was almost dawn when she was willing to sit on my bed and we talked about the house she grew up in, each adding details about the different rooms until finally, we slept.

That night, I was there for her to lean against. For that small thing.

More Resources:

Comfortable with Uncertainty, by Pema Chodran

Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter

“How Pandemics Seep into Literature,” Elizabeth Outka, Paris Review, April 8, 2020.

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April 3, 2020June 14, 2020

All of It

Tending to Endings (fourteen)

Lately, it has been impossible for me to not think about last year this time. I imagine with a pandemic going on, many of us are more reflective. We likely have more alone time, for one, save those who are front-line workers or parents of young children in which case, thank you, thank you, thank you for showing up each day in these harrowing conditions.

I am pretty sure I am not the only one missing their mom at this time, too. Or missing someone who helped hold them steady who is no longer reachable by phone or zoom.

I alternate between feeling my mom’s absence profoundly, and then, maybe even simultaneously, feeling relieved that she didn’t have to experience this in her fragile state at the end of her life. All of us in my family were at our limit last spring. I cannot imagine adding a pandemic into the situation.

And it occurs to me that a year later, even with Covid-19 begging every minute of our collective attention, my mom’s death is here sitting in the room with me.

There was a time when I would’ve said I would rather honor my mom’s birthday rather than the day she died. And, well, yes, that sounds positive, and logical. In the long run, August 28 will be the day to celebrate all Jane Stavoe brought to this world.

But apparently that does not mean that when April 9 comes around, my heart or my bones will let the anniversary be ignored. I didn’t think about that part.

I know many readers have also gone through the death of someone very close and have more perspective than I do on anniversaries. For next week’s Tending to Endings, I’d like to include some collective wisdom. If you have a story or experience about a death anniversary, I would love to hear from you. I’ve included more details at the end of this post.

I don’t know yet what we will do if anything on April 9, but I know I will be thinking of my mom because I think of her every day. I think of when she was well and I could lean into her wisdom and strength because I can use all of it I can get right now. And I think of how she was at the end, too, having lost her bearings, her body fragile, and yet somehow still grateful and funny and determined to go out loving. I do not want to forget her ending. It has been one of my greatest lessons about love and strength and intimacy. My mom was always my teacher and always will be.

This time last year, my mom moved into a hospital bed in the condo full time. She was no longer able to eat or drink or spend time on the lanai, though the slider in her bedroom allowed a wide view of the ocean. Blue was always her favorite color, and I was grateful she was surrounded by sea and sky.

This time last year, we knew any hour might be Mom’s last. My sister Sandy had just spent her spring break by my mom’s side, and my youngest sister, Amy, was about to arrive. I wrote this in my journal:

I am in the guest room of the condo and I hear the click-click-clicking of Mom’s fancy walker coming from my parents’ room. For a second, I get excited, thinking my mom is up and about, heading towards my room. Then I realized that it is—of course—my dad pushing my mom’s walker. He is storing it in the hall out of the way.
There is a day when you are sad that your mom has to use a walker. And then there is a day when you consider the sound of your mom’s walker coming towards you something to be thrilled about. Last week she was able to use that walker, and today, she is not.
Enjoy all of it. I remind myself.
Or maybe, not enjoy exactly, but love. Love that tonight I can sit with my mom and hear her breathe. And that today when I told her I loved her she smiled and nodded. And that tonight my dad and I watched the sunset from the lanai and talked about how we are sad.
It’s quieter with Bill and Sandy gone; I can get pretty serious, and my sister is good at making me laugh. Today it is harder to not focus on the losses. But my mom is here. And I am here. And my dad is here. And Sandy and Bill are on a plane over the Pacific. And Amy is almost here. And so many friends and family are holding us in their hearts.

All of It is no small feat, and probably impossible. I didn’t love lots of things about my mom’s ending. But I am so very grateful for the long moments I sat listening to her breathe, loving her.

I hope you will consider sharing your experience with anniversaries, whether the death was last year or many years ago. These can be traditions, or stories, things that surprised you. Ways of honoring the day, or just surviving it. Maybe the anniversary didn’t bring the expected emotion, or maybe there are things you wish you’d done differently. I’m not looking for one particular thing, but rather a wide range of experiences (All of it!), which I think could be helpful to others.

A sentence or a few sentences or a few paragraphs are all fine. Email to Laura@laurastavoe.com. Please let me know if you want your name or initials used, or if you’d prefer anonymity. I don’t know how many I’ll get (I hope, a lot!) or how many I’ll be able to include, but I will respond to your email either way before the post runs next week.

So do not tarry! And please do not worry about saying it perfectly. (Trust me, I know how that goes.) I can help with editing if you would like, but I think your voice and honest thoughts will make them just right.

If you prefer, you can also leave your response in comments below; I may still use it in next week’s Tending to Endings so that more people will get to see it.

Thank you so much for being part of this community.

Much love and strength to you and yours,

Laura

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March 13, 2020June 14, 2020

Tell Me More

Tending to Endings (eleven)

I generally don’t focus on regrets. My mom taught me that. There is no point to stewing over what you can’t change, she would say, unless you like to feel bad. And she’d give her small knowing smile. But sometimes the moments I wish I acted differently provide a helpful contrast, a non-example we would call it in education lesson planning.

There was a morning about five Christmases ago when my sisters and their families and mine met in Maui for the holiday. My mom, 75 at the time, did not seem elderly. She walked a couple miles each day. She was very involved with friends and community and life. But there were noticeable memory lapses, more than grasping for a word or mixing up grandchildren’s names.

On this morning, one of my nephews— I will call him Chris here—joined Mom and I in the elevator and was looking at his phone on the ride down to the lobby. When the doors opened, he said, goodbye to us. After he left, my mom said, “Chris didn’t even say good morning. You’d think he didn’t appreciate that we brought everyone here to be together.” I heard hurt and anger in her voice.

I was confused and a little defensive on Chris’s behalf. Mom didn’t believe in using guilt. The sentence didn’t sound like her. Also, we had just had a really good conversation with Chris. He had come to see her first thing that morning.

“I don’t think that’s how he feels,” I said, “We were just talking to him in the condo. He said good morning then.”

My mom stopped walking. “We did? I don’t remember that.” I could tell from her worried look that she really did not remember the conversation we’d had only about twenty minutes earlier.

“Yes, remember, we talked about walking to breakfast tomorrow morning.”

“I’m losing my mind,” my mom said. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“You’re ok, mom. You just forgot.”

“I don’t feel ok.”

I don’t remember everything I said, but it was along those same lines. We all forget things sometimes. You are fine!

What I wish I was able to say in that moment instead is: Tell me more about what that feels like. It sounds like it might be scary and I don’t want you to feel alone.

Today I see that my own fears got in the way of being able to hear what my mom was saying. I couldn’t see the opportunity, that she was reaching out to me.

It was a year before my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and even longer before I learned to not try to correct or adjust her perspective and instead listen to her feelings. (Something that has proven incredibly valuable in other circumstances if I remember to do it!)

Sometimes I think Alzheimer’s is going to be the thing that finally helps us to turn into a more compassionate culture—compassion for those with cognitive differences, compassion for caregivers and families, compassion for ourselves. One in three seniors dies with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. And with more and more of us living to old age, the number of people living with Alzheimer’s is likely to almost triple by 2050. Chances are high that each of us will at some point be close to someone who is affected.

Loving someone with Alzheimer’s means drawing close to a person who is undergoing profound loss. It is a heartbreaking disease that makes everyday life unpredictable. It is difficult to not let fear take over.

But not everything was as bad as I feared. I may regret moments, but I am so very grateful for all of the time that I did have with my mom and all that I learned. I found patience and open-mindedness and compassion are incredibly helpful. So is community. So is self-forgiveness.

Earlier this week a friend and I were talking about how before you know the disease of Alzheimer’s intimately, you think your loved one not remembering you would be the worst thing. It’s what people often ask—Did your mom know you? It was a question I didn’t even know how to accurately answer.

One afternoon my mom’s friend Pat came to visit. My mom wasn’t eating or drinking much. Pat had brought egg salad which had always been a favorite and mom ate spoonfuls from the bowl and groaned at how good it was.

Pat sat close to my mom who was reclining on the chaise lounge on the lanai.

Mom said, “We’ve had a lot of special times together, haven’t we?” I could tell she was searching. Mom had learned over the years to prompt people into giving more context.

Pat held my mom’s hands and looked into her eyes. “Yes, remember our parenting group when all of our kids were small? We’d gather in your kitchen.”

“Oh, I remember that,” my mom said. And I could tell from the glint in her eyes she did.

“And then later we used to come here to Maui and sit out on the lawn of Mahana and talk about books and try and solve all of the world’s problems!”

Mom laughed. “We have a ways to go on that one, don’t we!”

Dave and Pat Partlow and Jane and Ron Stavoe circa 1978

After awhile, Pat had to go, and I walked her to the door. When I returned to the lanai, my mom was staring at the empty chair where Pat had been, and continuing the conversation. “Pat, how are your children doing?” she said, staring intently at the empty chair. I slipped into it and smiled back. I held her hands. I answered as though I was Pat. My mom remained animated, happy. We talked and talked.

I remember that moment as a joyful one. It turns out, my worst fear was not that my mom wouldn’t remember me. It was that my mom would feel afraid and alone at the end of her life. I knew my mom had a very good life, and I didn’t want her ending to be tragic.

My mom had many challenges and difficulties at the end, but it was not tragic. She was surrounded by love and she knew it.

One morning a couple months before her death, my mom and I sat where we had shared coffee so many mornings. We looked out on the Pacific Ocean, the water and the sky still gray in the early light. She said, “It is so beautiful.”

“Isn’t it? Aren’t we lucky?” I said. And when she turned toward me, I could see from the searching look in her eyes, she wasn’t sure who I was.

“It’s ok if you don’t remember this—you have an illness that jumbles up time and place sometimes—but I am your daughter.”

“Really?” she said. “I don’t remember, but you feel familiar.” She smiled. “I have a warm feeling toward you.”

We sat, then, with our arms touching watching the surfers on their boards waiting for waves, watching the sky turn pale, then pink, then blue.

I think now about how close I felt in that moment to my mom, a woman who did not remember that she birthed me, yet knew me still.

For those in the Boise Area, the spring Death Cafe has been cancelled. You can find more info about upcoming related events on the Boise Death Cafe Fb page.

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