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ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

Chapter 28

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske 2014


Chapter 28



Note: This is the final chapter of ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME. It’s hard to believe it's been six months since I began posting a chapter every Tuesday.
Nearly 3,000 of you have read these chapters. I’m deeply grateful for your many generous comments and shared stories. In one way or another, dementia touches all of us.
ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME, slightly expanded, will be available as an ebook in November, 2014. I’ll remove these chapters during that time. Again, thank you, jo


After


With shocking swiftness, our lives returned to normal in Washington. We slid back into our routines, stunned at the ease of the transition, as if it should have been impossible to inhabit our old daily lives again, as if our year in Michigan would have marked us too deeply.

It was a giddy relief to see my children, to leave our house for dinner, a movie, or to visit with friends without worrying what was happening “across the driveway.” I relished the freedom, cherishing moments that were my own, thrilling at the simple act of making plans.

Yet, Louise shadowed my thoughts: was she comfortable, healthy? Was someone making her green tea? Was the nursing home staff treating her well, appreciating her sharp humor? I knew her too well to wonder if she was happy.

Ray and Barbara kept us apprised of Louise’s progress. Her memory continued to falter; she frequently obsessed over money. Where was Mike, when could she go home, and just exactly where was she? She sometimes turned on Ray, enraged he wouldn’t simply help her into his car and give her a ride home. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself; who did he think he was?

Once, she managed to slip out of the nursing home and begin the fifteen-mile walk back to the farm. Frantic staff members found her resolutely marching along the busy highway a mile from the building, telling them, “You’re going to make me finish my sentence, aren’t you?” before surrendering and allowing them to assist her into the car for the return trip to the nursing home.

In between these sad moments, she appeared to live at peace: making friends, having her hair done, joking with nurses, and always, always, eager to pass judgment on the food.

I sent her cards and photos and small gifts, the occasional naughty card, which my brother said she most appreciated. Never flowers. She’d refused to allow cut flowers in her house, tersely saying, “They’re dead,” and demanding they be removed.

I telephoned her, but only once. She asked several times, “Now who is this again?” It was too confusing for her, and she’d never been one to enjoy phone chats, anyway. “I need to see a face,” she’d told me often enough.

The realization that the only way we could speak together again was to make the 2,500-mile trip back to Michigan caused so much sorrow that I found myself pulling out the diary I’d kept in order to enjoy a mental visit. The diary was a tumultuous read – over 400 single-spaced pages – often written several times a day, on my computer. It had been my solace, a safe place to vent my frustrations, sorrow, and anger, and of course the triumphs and happiness, the changing seasons. The diary documented an even wilder roller coaster than I remembered.

I read portions of the diary aloud to Kipling, and we often ended in silence, shaking our heads over our naivete, and yes, admiration for our family’s valiant efforts to help Louise and Mike. Also pride in what we’d all struggled to accomplish because we loved them.

Had our intervention made a difference? It no longer mattered. As Susan had often said: moments, not memories, and there had been a treasure of golden moments. Our mistakes were tempered by the strength of our good intent. We’d gone to the boundaries of our ability and then, with the help of others, discovered we could go even further. Watching Louise and Mike, we’d witnessed indomitable love, and how it could remain a permanent component of the heart, untouched by age and dementia.

I never forgot that Kipling and I were an exception, able to give a year, to buttress each other, to have family to support us, and also to support Louise and Mike, or even that Louise and Mike had each other. We weren’t alone, as so many other caregivers were, running up against limited and heart-breaking options for their loved ones with dementia.

My mother’s cancer metastasized, and as Louise had noted in a mixture of irritation and awe, she never complained, leaving us unaware of how grave her health had become. My sister and I brought her from California where she was still assisting her own mother, to Washington, where she stayed with me during a series of tests. She was still hopeful and determined when a bronchoscopy lung test went horribly wrong and she was hospitalized, her life in imminent danger.

My brothers and sister arrived and we kept vigil at the hospital. During the only time we left her alone for a few moments, she quietly died.

After our hospital vigil and a breakfast together, we all returned to our house, stunned and grieving. Within moments, the phone rang. It was Barbara, reporting that Louise had also just unexpectedly died.

Their obituaries were printed in the same column in our local Michigan newspaper. Our mother’s first, June Zemke Dereske, followed by our aunt’s: Louise Dereske Zukas, I wondered what they would have made of that.

Louise had requested no funeral, but our mother had planned a funeral mass in Michigan and burial next to our father, so we held two Catholic funeral masses in Michigan, a day apart. The timing of their deaths caused much comment and bemusement. More than once at the VFW Auxiliary-hosted luncheon afterward, we heard someone say, “Those two,” in between shaking heads and engaging in the Midwest passion for telling stories of the lives of the dead.

A few years after our sojourn in Michigan, Kipling developed a persistent backache and was diagnosed with colon cancer. He died in our home at the age of forty-nine.

Morris the cat was unsuccessfully adopted and reappeared at the farm a few weeks later, but from then on kept his distance from people. Ray replenished an open bag of cat food in the garage for him. For years Morris would appear and disappear until people were unsure whether they were seeing Morris or one of his progeny.

Thieves pried out the coins and valuables that Louise had cemented into her stone patio, and the antique glass she’d left in the yard slowly disappeared.

But the farm and the land remained, each season laying its changes on the flora and fauna that thrived there, a constancy, while the lives that had shaped and been touched by it, passed through.


Life can’t be lived without hurt, though I try to cover the bad memories with good.
Louise
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