Grandma K

(written 7/9/12)

Dear TEAMS,

It is late—almost midnight—and I cannot sleep.  Today was the last day of an 8-day “vacation” that Daddy and I had planned, where we and the two youngest drove to my hometown to spend time with your grandma, whom you will remember someday was taken by Parkinson’s-related dementia.  (The 3 oldest of you remained due to work schedules.)  I was telling people who asked about it in church this morning that “vacation” was a loose term, and it was better phrased as “a visit” rather than “vacation,” in that I associate “vacation” with rest, relaxation, and refreshment.  I can’t really say the last eight days has held any of those in any good measure.

I am trying to picture you in maybe 20 years looking back to this time and how I processed my mother’s illness and what will be (unless our Father intervenes) her last few years on earth.  Right now, I think you are all fairly young enough yet that it’s more of a factual occurrence to you, because (of course!) anyone over 40 is old and that’s what happens to old people.  As you get older and realize that aging isn't so black and white, you may feel differently.  I want to tell you a little of how I feel right now, though, just in case you ever look back and wonder.

I feel utter sadness.  I came to terms about 15 years ago with the choices my mother made with her life and made my own, different choices as to how to deal with my life, so I’m not really mourning that loss of relationship, as painful as it was.  I’m mourning that my mother was a gentle, kind, loving, merciful woman who really won’t ever get over the hurts she endured and clung to that ended up handicapping her.  Before the disease, there was deep within me the hope and belief and optimism that as long as she drew breath, today might be the day she experienced true freedom and grace.  I prayed for her faithfully all these years to discover her full potential in Christ and experience the full destiny Almighty God had placed on her, and it looks as if she will not experience that on this earth.  She lived a kind life of a pastor and helped many people.  There was so much more for her brilliant mind to do, but she chose to let bitterness, anger and frustration steal, kill, and destroy the days and years of cognitive coherence before the onset of the disease.  

I feel frustrated.  Now my mother lives on the floor in the nursing home that is the one you go to before the dementia ward…everyone knows it, even though it’s given the name of full time assisted care.  And she cannot write her first name anymore, and sometimes she doesn’t know who I am.  Your Uncle C told me and my siblings in an email this week that she has $900 left to her name, which means in about 18 months we will have to assume expenses not covered by government aid.  That will be no problem, and it will be the least I can do for the woman who chose to let me live in her womb and loved me and mothered me.  But I am saddened that her choices with her finances during her life have brought her to this point.  Proverbs 13:22 speaks of living in a way that leaves an inheritance for not just your children, but for your children’s children.  I am frustrated that my mother thought through a poverty filter that had her believing that she would never be “wealthy,” which caused her to spend her money differently and has essentially made her a ward of the State.  Make no mistake:  your father does a wonderful job of providing for me financially and I do not need an inheritance, and you will be fine without one as well.  It’s just that she was better than what she perceived she was and needed to respect herself more in all those little choices she made financially.  But only she could do that work within her brain and spirit, not anyone else.  And she didn't.

I feel powerless.  M is turning 18 in just 3 days.  It is not his fault that circumstances are what they are with your grandmother, that it impacts my thoughts and overwhelms me.  Next weekend we will be having a wonderful party to honor his graduation and to bless him in becoming an adult, and all I can think of is how tired and overwhelmed I am, and how I just want to curl up into a ball and sleep for a month and not be responsible for anyone or anything anymore.  I want his party to be one he remembers as a rite of passage; the day he became a man.  While he will remember the party for that special, life-changing event, I will remember it as the day God threw him a party while I was His hands and feet, because I just don’t have it in me.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

And just in case you ever wonder, your Grandma always loved you a whole big bunch, and knew you loved her, too.

Love,