The Unraveling: How One Moment Changed Everything

My mother's vascular dementia journey.

All the generations. Photo Owned by Author.

Thank you for reading today. This week’s story was not the one I wanted to write but the one I had to write. It just came out. If you find my work worthwhile, please leave a 🤍 so others whom this story may help will find it.

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When my mother first entered memory care, she still looked like herself. Her hair was curled neatly, and her wardrobe was Kohls-stylish for a 76-year-old. She appeared to be a rosy-cheeked Oma. She would have been pissed, though, if she'd known that this would become her permanent home.

But as it was, she knew very little about herself. She didn't even answer to her name, Angela.

Everything had inalterably changed since my father lost it that day.

For decades, I had wondered when he would get fed up and leave. I'd often imagined driving up to their home and finding it surrounded by yellow police tape. That was how volatile their relationship was. Yet Dad never gave up on Mom, demonstrating what infinite patience looked like while I had long since abandoned our relationship.

Neither my parents nor I had an inkling that the sunny spring day in May would be the last time my mother would know how to drive, balance a checkbook, or cook. That it would be the last morning she would be able to dress herself.

That day was the only day that my father's patience evaporated, manifesting into something physical when he pushed my mother down during one of her manic episodes. He must have been so upset when she couldn't get up from the floor, but he immediately called 9-1-1. Mournful, he admitted what he had done, prompting the police officer to handcuff him and sit him in the township cruiser as the neighbors watched on.

The following morning, my father waited for us to pick him up after a sleepless night in a cold jail cell while my mother was dressed in a blue hospital gown not even a mile away, being prepped for surgery. She could still think for herself before they cut her open, but afterward, she woke up with only the barest traces of herself.

Before that day in May, she'd been a ninja at concealing the piled-up damage from the strokes, like being half-blind in each eye, but the anesthesia took away all pretense. When she came to, Mom's impulse was to get the eff out of there. She refused to stay in bed, prompting the hospital to assign round-the-clock monitoring so she wouldn't damage her newly repaired leg. The aid stationed next to her drew her patience from the same well as my father had, settling my mother back down, over and over again, explaining why she wasn't allowed to get up.

Mom's behavior grew increasingly bizarre as her leg healed. Mental illness combined with dementia is a vexing diagnosis even for a geriatric psychiatrist, whose job it was to manage her symptoms. On one visiting day, during the marathon of trying different drugs on my mother, I met a woman I did not recognize. Smiling brightly, my mother greeted me like a long-lost friend as I entered the room. My spidey senses lit up, and I slowed my step. Her manner oozed love and sweetness. She spoke as a loving mother should.

Who was this imposter?

Could this have been the mother I would have had, had she sought treatment? What a good life it would have been if I had had the “nice” mom. But nice mom disappeared as abruptly as she arrived, and it was back to combat the next day.

Throughout her lengthy hospitalization, my dad harbored a fantasy that my mother's dementia would go away and that the wife he'd always known would return.

"I don't think she's going to get better." His words hung in the air.

"You thought mom would be cured?"

I'd long ago learned that things always got worse when it came to Mom's mental health, never better. After weeks of trial and error with psychotropic medication, it was clear that the old Angela was gone.

When Mom returned home in July, my repentant dad doted on her. The judge had been lenient with my father, allowing him to be my mother's caretaker because he had no prior criminal record.

At the rehab, my mother had been insolent with the staff: biting, kicking, and spitting. It had been humbling to hear her violence toward the staff each day. Now, at home, she was sanguine, with my father anticipating her every need.

My parents fell into a familiar rhythm, albeit a new normal, until my dad could no longer ignore a persistent cough. The doctor delivered his diagnosis unapologetically—inoperable Stage IV lung cancer. We left the office with the hope the doctor parceled out: people were walking around and living quality lives at this late stage of cancer. My father would be like them.

To my horror, my father died three months later.

I always had the knowledge that I'd be left to care for my mother. Of course, I was an only child, and who else was there? But deep in my bones, I knew the truth: she would wear him out. Angela would outlast him, and she would win—she always did.

After Dad died, my life changed, but Mom's life changed more. That spring day, she had gambled with my father's sanity, as she had many days of their 53-year marriage. She'd had a long run, but her luck ran out.

Who would have guessed that it would end this way?

After he died, my mom's first few months at the memory care facility were hellish. She knew it wasn't home and wanted no part of it. Despite witnessing my father's last breath, she wanted him back to take care of her. She couldn't retain that he was gone and wasn't coming back. He had been there for her always, and when he wasn't there for her now, it didn't compute.

Although she couldn't remember my name, she knew I was someone who would do things for her. She begged, threatened, and cried to take her home. When she saw that I was leaving her there, she'd try to follow but would be intercepted by the staff, giving me time to punch in the alarm code and slip away.

I decorated her room with photos and knickknacks from home and bought one of her favorite Christmas cacti to improve her mood. Aren't plants supposed to do that?  

I needed all the help I could get.

I gathered Mom's best clothes, the garments she'd been saving for a special occasion or a trip somewhere. She wasn't a job seeker dressing for success, but being groomed might make her feel better.

But Mom no longer knew how to button buttons or zip zippers.

Those hardly worn clothes went to Goodwill and were replaced with loungewear making it easier for the staff to dress her. No more stuffing herself into size 16 pants or being mad about it. XL elastic-waist jogging pants would be her new costume de rigueur.

I arranged weekly beauty parlor appointments, where my mother would have her hair washed and set as she'd always done at home. To revive my mother’s look, I asked the stylist to perm her hair. Mom sat obediently for two hours while the chemicals bent her straight white hair into curls.

Mom looked better. She looked like herself.

But it was all window dressing.

No matter what I did, Mom wasn't that person anymore. I wasn’t getting her back. The lady who had taken so much pride in her appearance no longer even looked in a mirror.

Mom would never find herself again, and neither would I.

I was doing this for me, not her. It was time to let it rest.