Dealing with Grief After Losing Someone to Alzheimer's Disease

When I was 40 years of age, I got a call while I was at my job that my father had suddenly died. My father was 74, overweight and smoked all of his life, so I had feared most of my life that he would die at any moment from a heart attack, but as the years go on, everyone just got used to the idea of his habits and basically, he was in good health for 74 years. Now, this was a shock to get that unexpected phone call. I was so thankful that I had just spent the day with him three days earlier! He showed no apparent signs or symptoms. He just walked up a flight of steps and it was his time. He died that quickly.

My mother was always in great health all of her life as well. In fact, she had only a few minor issues all of 89 years. She lived for 20 years after my father's death. Around the age of 89, she began to show apparent memory issues and as all families do, we first assumed it was just age. After all, we all forget things all of the time! Her memory seemed to get a bit worse, so we did what all families do and took her to the doctor for a check up and he started her on one of the very few drugs that exist for dementia. For a few months, this seemed to be helping. To make a long three year story shorter, as she slowly progressed into becoming a victim of Alzheimer's disease, we went through the various other drugs for Alzheimer's and mental depression and for the last year of her life, she lived in a nursing home as she needed 24 hour professional care.

Our family has watched our mother deal with this terrible way to end a lifetime of great physical health and happiness until she finally passed away, quietly in her sleep this January 25, 2010. She lived to be 91 years of age, but really lost her last 2 years of quality of life. I suppose 2 out of 91 years is not too bad of a deal, but I know her last two were years when she wanted to leave this world during the moments when she would wake from her constant living nightmare of Alzheimer's, and realize that every second seemed like a year to her. Thankfully, most of her time was being unaware of time.

Dealing with losing my mother, compared with losing my father, twenty years ago is quite a different matter. Obviously, I am older, so that taken into account, there is just a marked difference in this type of grief. I think about that endless times over the last two years that I would think about mom living in the nightmare of Alzheimer's and feeling terrible that she had to live like that, instead of having great times with her family. I think of how many times I wished she would pass from this world to end that living hell and once again, be with her husband and at peace.

So this time, this grief feels strangely different as moments of happiness for her being done with her nightmare and yet knowing that she is now gone forever, both slipping in and out of my thoughts. With my dad, it was pretty much, sudden shock and sadness and finding happiness throughout the years by thinking of all the great happy memories.

I know that time heals and changes feelings of grief...some taking longer than others, but there will always be a uniqueness in the loss of my mother that we didn't get to have the happy moments in the last couple years of her life. We just waited for the end and we knew it was taking way too long in her mind. It was like she was gone....but not really. Then when it finally came...it was emptiness and happiness.

It has only been a few weeks since she passed and the sweeping moments between both of these emotions have give cause to wonder how long that will last, as I think I will always remember the sadness of her last years at the same time of remembering her happy times of her life.

She was a little girl, an excited and confused teenager, a young woman in love and full of wonder for the future, a loving young married woman, a new mother, excited with a family's dreams, a 50 plus year working mother, trying to provide shelter and food for her children and dealing with all life's issues, a widow, a mother who lost a son before her time, a person who found happiness in her latter years, a life long dancer, and just lost a few of her last years to the tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, until she is finally at peace, and once again...young, in love and dancing with my dad.

I like to think that they are spending eternity looking in each other's eyes, smiling, embracing and knowing no sadness, but living as they did when they first met and fell in love.

Love you both...Mom and Dad!