Somehow I find myself back at TP and wishing I'd spent more time on looking at the 'end of life' posts.
Mum died this afternoon and after the last twelve years I can only wish her peace, and mourn the person we lost years ago.
It's been so hard reading about other people's struggles, and wishing I could help them. Now I know that there's nothing anyone can do to help in the end. Dementia claims another life.
The whole of life draws in on itself at this moment, a kind of 'removed' state, whilst the world outside continues on just as before. In that,there is something of tremendous value, allowing one to focus entirely on something
completely your own. They may call it grieving, or whatever label denotes the depth of feeling which comes about after a loved one has died - especially in this world of dementia, which has claimed a 'person' much earlier on, whilst leaving them to live on so impaired by a disease which seems to mock at all the values we hold dear. Such is dementia.
Yet what seems so overwhelming now, so painful, so ridden with contradictions, will transform at some stage. Not tomorrow, nor the week afterwards, but when one actually becomes cognizant of the fact that the loved one no longer has to bear that struggle, that consuming disease termed dementia, there is genuine solace, because the battle is ended. Then, through a clearer and calmer mind, all the 'positives' come into play. The mother we knew, who was once able to laugh and cry with us, care for us, console us, nurture us and always be our mother, despite everything, despite dementia - is at peace. Our journey with dementia, a shared one in as much as we, as carers, as children, possess that bond, that very special bond, that journey too is over. One will feel that weight lifted from one's heart and mind. Not now, but a time ahead. And when that time does arrive, you can look upon the picture hanging on the bedroom wall, as I do every single morning, of a mother who bravely lived the latter years of her life with Alzheimer's, which was to claim her life, a picture taken before the disease was diagnosed, a picture taken on a tranquil afternoon, beside a river, where we took our very last picnic, with my mother smiling as she always did, like a ray of sunshine filled with abiding love, and you can look upon that picture without sadness, without pain, without a shred of despair, but with a profound sense of joy, of having been lucky enough to have had such a mother, for
so long and for giving to me so much of herself, even up until the very end of her own life.
