aging and acceptance

Observing two different dementia experiences

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I just realized yesterday that in the past few years my sister and I have been witnessing two different dementia experiences up-close and personal. Since my father’s death in March 2020, both our mother and our brother have been slowly losing touch with reality. While my sister has taken care of our mother in a “quality” assisted living facility in Denver, Mike and I have been doing our best to assist my brother in a small rural town in southern Colorado. Another aspect of these different experiences is that my mother has retirement funds to spend on her care, while my brother receives all of his care through us, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Our brother John, Christmas 2021

The experience I am most familiar with is that of my brother. He came here at the end 2020 from a lean-to he had been living in near Oak Creek north of Sedona for a number of years. He knew he could no longer live that life with no assistance if he needed it. He had a few health problems then, but he was generally doing well. Since then he has started on supplemental oxygen and various other drugs and supplements. Only in the past year of so has he begun complaining constantly of “total brain fog” and terrible memory lapses.

Our mother (on right) at my father’s 90th birthday party, February 2019

Since our Dad died in 2020, right before the “COVID years,” Mom was forced to live alone for a while. She entered assisted living two years ago as her memory continued to fail her. Hers seems to be more like classic Alzheimer’s disease with gradual memory loss. She no longer cares how she looks or what she wears, and only occasionally reflects on her many losses. However, she is still quite aware that her memory is failing her. This really is the long goodbye for us…

Luckily my sister and I have each other and our husbands to share our concerns and losses, but it is still quite a challenge to watch our family fall apart before our eyes. As my sister says, with her decades of experience in the fields of long term care and gerontology,

“Everyone tells you that aging is tough, but you don’t really get it until it happens to you…”

Feeling the losses & the gratitude

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

This fall I am feeling my losses fully. My recent tumble in my garden surprised and confused me. My balance is so not what it used to be and I must accept this fact gracefully. In fact I am now realizing that I can no longer do more than one thing at once, and that includes breathing! I have always been one to take off in a rush to get things done. This has only gotten worse because I now feel I must do something before I forget what I’m doing! But this simply will not do for me anymore. My damaged brain (one TBI and three concussions) and my inability to breathe deeply now creates a situation where I MUST TAKE THINGS MORE SLOWLY.

I know. I’m not the first person to discover this limitation of injury and aging, but I see now I am taking things too far to my own detriment. I need to move slower and do less even when I’m anxious to do more. I get angry with this situation, but this is my reality now. As always I come back to my own truth:

Acceptance releases everything to be what it already is.

I have always pressured myself partially because I was taught to be more and contribute. I now also see the flaw in that way of thinking. I am merely another human trying to find some truth and meaning in this life of mine. I am not worse or better than the rest, because in the end most of what we do does not matter. That is why I now laugh when I see this:

So I am letting go like so many do as they age, and as strange as it may seem, I sometimes see the benefits of my present circumstances. My head injuries have caused me to slow down, something I needed to do so I can appreciate each moment more. For example, I have loved Stephen Levine’s “Meditation on Letting Go” for decades, ever since I met him back in the 1980s in Boulder. But it is only now that I can fully appreciate its meaning.

So this Thanksgiving I give thanks for the life I have right now and can finally slow down enough to fully appreciate.