Now that Snowy has flown on ahead, I am having trouble finding a balance. As hard as it was to bide with us after her sweetheart went ahead and her mind slipped away, she never stopped surrounding me with her love, strong, warm, and protective, through her last breath. As hard as it was for her, she still waited until I could finally tell her, “I’m ready.” But I’m finding I wasn’t.

But I’m not sure I was. I was ready for her not to hurt anymore or to experience the terror that comes with losing whole chunks of who and what make up one’s ’self’ or to be so sad not to be with Pop or any of the millions of indignities and slashes Alzheimer’s fights with. In the last month I felt it slipping up on her, on us, but I still thought it – death, forever gone – could be held off with denial and fierce protecting.

As the advance came on and on and on, each day was a different revelation, a different chapter of arriving at death than I ever knew existed, steps that went on and on too far to retreat from. I couldn’t stop it and she didn’t want it stopped Long ago she had made such things clear.

Chick had kept her safe and nurtured and cocooned for 6+ years, being her every day/ 24 hours per companion, watchguard, cook, encourager, safe-haven as the fears struck into Snowy as she cried out her refusal to accept the thieving that never stopped in her brilliant, agile, omniscient mind. I circled around them both trying to make everything as ‘normal’ and recognizable for Snowy as possible so that she would hopefully feel less lost in an unrecognizable wilderness.

The past 8 months that she was in the nursing home were probably about as hard on Chick and me as it was on Snowy. By that time she was like our precious child, and we were used to being so totally and completely responsible for her, for trying to grab up and glue the pieces that were falling out of her brain as fast as they hit the floor and shattered, with never a chance for success.

We worried about her constantly because we were no longer with her 24 hours a day, able to know with a glance how she was, what the battle of the day would be, just that she was safe with us in the den or tucked up in her bed in the next room. Her ‘conditions’ were optimal – she was surrounded with things that were familiar if she was able to grasp that. She had 2 on 1 attention at all times.

But when things began to really slide downhill for her starting around Christmas time and she was subject to issues that seeing a doctor from time to time and too much delay in getting her meds adjusted to help where she was Right Then, it was a huge blessing for  Hospice to become involved and start providing nursing/ medical oversight as well as other things that helped her care and safety, like a special bed (on loan — it was moved out quickly to another patient when Snowy left home) and the like. Having a skilled nurse who came to see her a minimum of once a week and frequently more often who was experienced in the medicines that were needed with discussion and prescription by the Hospice doctors. The aides who came a couple of times a week to help bathe and work with her were gentle presences and so greatly appreciated.

She continued to have, until she went into the nursing home, a volunteer devoted to her who visited almost every week for an hour or more whose warm and cheery visits not only reached through Snowy’s fragile shell to bring delight but also gave Chick a few moments of respite to run errands or grocery shop or just stop and breathe for a second.

As things escalated and we went through the fall, the ER visit, the few days at a care facility so that Snowy’s pain could be evaluated and helped, and the hospice doctor first told me late in January/ early February that Snowy was no longer physically able to be cared for by us in the nest we had together and needed to go to a skilled nursing facility — and that he wouldn’t be surprised to hear that she had died within 10 days because that is how far and fast she was slipping away, I began to walk around with a darkness shadowing me and a feeling of not being able to breathe. How could we suddenly be ‘there’?

Chick and I wept as we discussed what was best for Snowy, no matter how it tore our hearts to share her care. I had promised her and other family members that when it became a fact that Snowy needed true nursing, we would make that happen and not be blind to our own limitations. We began the search of facilities in this area.

At this same time was when from out of nowhere and despite promises to the contrary, I was laid off from my job and have had the added terror ever since of not being able to replace it (yet)(still)(at my age/ level of experience) and the extra shock of depressing emotions and sense of worthlessness that naturally attaches to such an event.

Still, it was nowhere near as important as finding the right nursing facility for Snowy as she has been my highest priority since my father handed her into my care almost 7 years ago. Chick and I went to place after place, checking out things that mattered to each of us and to both of us and applying our different sensitivities to each inspection. Some places were very beautiful and looked like nice hotels, some with such studied “Florida Themes” that it just felt weird. We were ’sniffing’ the odors, noting people who looked very alone, a quietness that spoke to inattention ????, a stacking of souls. We were getting a bit disillusioned and worried that a good standard of real caring, real nursing was something that providers were not showing us.

We finally went to one near downtown, and it was the first time we both perked up a bit — there were definitely better signs of real care there. And then about the last shot we had on the list we had compiled found us downtown near an older part of town where all the “First” churches of the area had been and where there was a sense of time offering, in an old, non-fancy 3 story building, there was C. G. C. And we went in and our discussions were not with salesmen or saleswomen or newly-hired marketing reps, but with the Senior Nursing Director who sat us down in her office (on the same floor that Snowy would soon call home) and talked to us very openly and honestly about what kind of care they could provide to  Snowy, the nursing, the real nursing.

And with the old building giving both Chick and me a little sense of downtown Birmingham, we hoped that Snowy might feel a whiff of some such familiarity when she saw it. And we all worked together to make it happen.

If you’ve followed us along this journey the last 8 months, you know that I haven’t always been ‘happy’ and Snowy was definitely struggling with not being “home”. But putting it all in context as the last months of a precious life — a life filled with brilliance, accomplishment, happiness, sadness, tragedy, achievement, and making connections all around the world — the nursing was a fine thing for Snowy, and it improved her quality of life quite a bit from what it would have been anywhere else. Although we would have pampered her, we could not nurse or doctor her so even though my mind went constantly to wanting to have her back at home with us, we could not have kept her uplifted. She was too used to being ‘the boss of us’ to let us do things for or have her do things that truly helped her out. She always responded better with such things to “authority figures”.

Yes, I also wished many times that I could have followed through with her suggestion that I move in to her room with her (she always ‘conveniently’ ignored the fact of her sweet little roommate when she would lay out her perfect idea). I would have been quite happy curling up in the little bed next to hers and reading books to her and trying not to let the tv bother her…  It wasn’t an option, but it was always so incredibly hard to leave, even on those days she struggled so with who she was, where she was, what was going on.

Every time a storm would start, and it seemed that we had many thunderstorms through these months, Chick and I would always look at each other so sadly and hope that Snowy was safely tucked in and not afraid.

On the Friday ‘before’, she prayed all day, sang hymns, and then told one of her aides she was ‘ready’. We had heard her through the months and were also told by aides that Snowy would cry sometimes and pray for God to take her because the echoing stranger-ness of her mind made her long for the testing to end. But this time there was a true sense of making her peace and feeling the approach of rustling wings.

From Sunday morning until the wee hours of Thursday morning I rarely left Snowy’s side. Chick and W were there with her, too, through hours and hours and hours each day into the evenings when the little fellow finally needed to be taken home and tucked in before their return the following day. I slept very, very little — resenting even those few snatched moments when my head got so heavy on my neck that I would wake a bit later to find myself on the floor next to Snowy’s bed, wrapped in one of her spare blankets and with my fingers still entwined with hers.

I was so afraid of missing her passing, of having her going forward alone and unattended, so I refused to leave even as my own daughter did everything she could to take care of me as I sat the last vigils with my mother.

It was hard, really hard, to wait with her through the active stages of dying, fighting only that she be kept comfortable and not in pain, respected and gently treated. I think I mentioned in some of the posts I did during this period that I saw through the days AND the nights that we waited, tended, watched, how wonderful the care and love and respect she was given by these real, human professionals at CGC, how many came to quietly tell her goodbye, people she had touched with her core spirit of sweetness, love, and appreciation of others so that she had so quickly become a darling favorite, people I had not seen before because I’d not had the occasion to spend day and night at her side there. The kindness with which they attended to her, assuring that everything for her and around her was meant to have her comfortable and as unbothered as possible, well, it moved me over and over. I thought after those hours and hours I would not have any tears left I poured out so many as I felt and saw my little mommy slipping away from me.

And they all turned and extended care and comfort and kindness to me, too, through this, and I was confused by that because I didn’t want to be a bother or in the way and wanted everything focused on Snowy. But they quietly worked at both, and I felt myself buoyed up by the many acts of caring they tucked around me.

In the moments after Snowy was gone, just quietly passing on to the higher plane, I felt encouraging for her because she had at last put the G.D. Alzheimer’s behind her, and she wasn’t going to have to deal with the cancer that I had found just that evening coming back on her arm that it had savaged twice before, and joy that she was in the arms of my father at long last, and being hugged by her parents, and my brother, and so many others she knew were waiting for her to arrive.

And in exhaustion we made it through the next days, feeling just ’stupid’ with being so tired, and then getting ready and getting on the road for the long drive to the hometown, contacting so many people as we drove, the hours of driving extended by aeons for the stops necessary for traveling with a little baby who needed better care than we would have given ourselves otherwise and also by angry storms that frightened us in the dark hours of the night as we pressed North and West and found windshield wipers that were not capable of clearing the way.

There was my disbelieving fury at what I found when we stopped by the cemetery the next day, twisted up with the dumbass ‘response’ as to what had happened; the uneasy then pretty fair reconnection with some family, although we were held at arm’s length throughout; the really great day in Birmingham spent with Snowy’s close cousin and then the inclusion of the cousin’s younger (80!) brother and his wife that made us feel ’seen’ for the long and loving care we had embraced with Snowy all these years; then the quiet but vicious verbal attack that was made on me as the visitation was starting by a family member who hissed and snarled over things that made no sense and ended with the statement that at the end of the funeral “we are through!”. I was shocked and hurt and my tears then were taken by all the visitors as the tears for our loss, and suddenly I wasn’t breathing any more.

Snowy’s cousin(s) quickly wrapped me around with reassurance because of their quiet observation over these years of the never-ceasing love and care Snowy had with us and the lack of connection (even phone calls) from others. “No regrets!” Cousin told me firmly and repeatedly. “You did everything Just Right!”

I know that I can look my father and my mother in the eyes when the day comes and know that I did as my father asked and my mother hoped, and did the best I could. People who weren’t around participating in caring and loving and the good and bad and terrible times just don’t know what all goes in to that, and it is their loss, by their choice.

Home base, finally, after pausing for sanctuary at precious ’sister’s’ haven overnight and for a long morning sleep the day following the funeral, then making the long trek back through the countryside to hit interstate and the way back in to the River City.

Through a miscommunication with the vet where the dog and 4 kitties were boarding, I had to pay them the last money I had, which had been earmarked for a hopeful November’s rent payment, in order to get the critters back. Talk about another unneeded shock at a time when I am feeling most vulnerable!!!! I honestly, truly, and desperately do not know what we will do in 2 weeks’ time. I just don’t.

Over the last several days I have applied for about 10 or more jobs, but as everything is hitting me NOW, my hope is faded out to almost nothing and I am lost and falling …. I just need some time to sit and grieve for my mother, and there’s no time, no time. I just can’t breathe.