Christmas 2007

This is the first time since 1948 that my mom won't celebrate Christmas with her beloved George. My dad died of heart failure in April and, with help from a timely buyout offer at work and my siblings, I have been her primary caregiver since July 1.

On Monday she will take up residence in an assisted living facility, her first time living on her own.

This is hard for a lot of reasons. The timing is unfortunate -- being the Christmas season, which has been an important time of the year for us to come together as a family. But that couldn't be avoided.

And mom suffers from a short-term memory loss similar to but not Alzheimer's Disease. So she is having a real hard time remembering the rationale for this move: a place where she won't have to worry about keeping up a home, cooking, managing all the things associated w/ life that we take for granted and never think much about.

But she can't remember to take her meds, how many cups of mix she has put in to make pancakes or that she has something boiling on the stove. So we are moving her to a place where she can be relieved of all that and just enjoy the things she still likes to do and CAN do: be social, paint, do puzzles, go out for meals and stuff like that.

She'll have her own room/apartment, but doesn't have to cook or clean or take out the trash or any of the things that bog us all down. She just gets to play.

And we want this for her. She needs the company, the stimulation, the recreation and the chance to see that life with out dad is still living and that she has a lot of that left to do.

I know she's scared, but I can't imagine not being able to understand why your kids are making you move out of your home.

This has been a damned long few months for me -- much, much harder than anything I imagined and I imagined it would be tough! Watching her try to come to terms with dad's death and just patiently repeating to her that her crying spells, her fears, her hyper anxiety and her grief are normal, reasonable and not just some childish fit has been hard to do day after day (these have been pretty routine the last month since we started planning for this).

But with a lot of help, here we are. Moving weekend. Her last weekend living in the place she and dad called home the last 17 years or so.

Here's to smooth transitions, new beginnings, to family and friends and the faith that things are happening as they should and for a greater good.

Cheers, Flickrland. I thank you all for your support and friendship. I'll be back in a couple days ...