Baby girl turns 58 (from April)

Mother turned 58 on April 12th so we tried to celebrate as much as possible with her. Celebrations tend to be short because of Carole's normal bedtime of 7pm but we did manage to party until 8pm on Sunday for her birthday. Friday, the actual day of her birthday, Melanie brought Mother down to my restaurant for birthday Margaritas. Afterwards, they went for birthday sundaes! The first two picture are of Mother insisting she have a cigarette and then insisting Melanie and her go out to lunch. Usually she's not asking for something crazy so we cave in and let our girl have what she wants. Sometimes with the dementia anxiety a cig is a great life line to calming that lady. For her birthday she had a nice night with Melanie. Sunday we had a wee get together for Mother with her babies (grand babies and cats included) and lots of cake. I'm bummed I wasn't able to get a picture of her in the birthday hat, but she did wear it for awhile.

Dreams

I know I haven't been feeling emotionally stable these days but I've been making progress until my wonderful dreams from last night. My dreams started with a nice trip to Spain, where I lived for a year, with Melanie and Kendra which was fantastic because I miss Spain so much. We were staying at this different type of hotel and I started to notice that the people staying there were a little off and my dementia radar went off so I went to talk to the jefa (boss lady) about it and sure enough we were staying at a dementia house the integrated tourists with the demented as a therapy. At that point I volunteered to stay their and aid the patients but before I could get a response I woke up. I was a little shaken by it but soon returned to sleep. 

My next dream ended up being very related to the precious dream. I went to the local grocery store with Trisha, a childhood friend, and bought some snacks and what not and when I walked out the door I saw a Mom standing in the parking lot about 50 ft away. After over a month of not seeing her Melanie picked her up for her first day pass out of the nursing home and surprised Mom with a visit to Dutchway, the grocery store/restaurant. It was also a surprise for me. I jolted across the parking lot; I was already sobbing uncontrollably. Before I could even reach Mother she had her arms out ready to give me a hug, a hug I've been waiting for for years. I embraced her and she surprisingly wasn't crying and she said, "it's ok. It's ok." After that we just cried together, embracing each other. I woke up with so many emotions. It was amazing to feel her hug and hear her say that but then again it was just a dream. Clearly, I was a little emotional today but I'm trying to be thankful for the beautiful moment we had in my dream and maybe, just maybe, I'll get my hug the next time I visit. 

Changes

Well, it's clearly been a long time since I've last posted but it's never too late to start up again. There have been a lot of changes since my last post. Of course Mother has changed a lot. Things just get worse with dementia. Once you hit a "terrible" moment in the disease it is soon made into a normality until a much worse moment happens. Welp, we were well aware that it was beginning to be very hard for us to continue taking care of Mother so we started looking into nursing homes almost a year ago. It certainly wasn't an easy task to do. After looking at many different homes we found the perfect home for our special lady. After going through the process of getting her enrolled we were put on a waiting list. We were told that since we were caring for her by ourselves and full time that they were going to put us at the top of the list so we were full of all sorts of emotions. Sadness, joy, and guilt to name a few. Weeks turned into months and the emotions and feelings became empty. The waiting game was too much. It was too long so at that point I couldn't feel anything but frustration. The emotions that I has once felt about her leaving subsided. It didn't seem real until that Tuesday morning when I was at work and received the group text from Kendra to the siblings letting us know that they had a bed for Mom and she would be going to the nursing home on Monday. My heart sank. I immediately lost my breath and began to cry. I have no idea what emotions I had felt at that time. I was so sad and so happy. I was trembling and not sure what to do. I was I going to look at my Mommy when I went home to see her after work knowing what I knew? We certainly couldn't tell her. The next 6 days were very, very hard along with the two months leading up until now...