My mom is nearly 86 years old. She’s in remarkably good health, except for the aches and pains associated with aging. A litte over a year ago, my mom had a “first.” For the first time, she was unable to balance her checkbook. She had always balanced her checkbook to the penny, every single month of my entire life. For me, if I’m out of balance and I can’t find it, I’ll just note a correction and move on with my life. Not so with my mom – she would wrangle that checkbook register until she found whatever amount she was out. Until May a year ago.

The problem compounded over the next four months, but she didn’t say anything until early September when she was unable to cope with the anxiety of being out of balance any longer. I tried to recreate her checkbook register in an Excel spreadsheet, but by this time she had marked through so many entries, tried to recreate it herself in a notebook, ran out of pages in her register and tried to keep records on a separate page in a notebook, and then started a new register that she picked up at the bank. It was a nightmare. I ended up creating the spreadsheet from the online account register by signing into the bank. I was able to find several errors where she had written down transactions twice on different pages and where she had missed adding in automatic debits – things she should have caught but just missed.

In the interim between the May and September, she had a car accident. She pulled over on a car to her left which was mostly in front of her. She hit the lady in her passenger side rear quarterpanel. She still swears the lady hit her.

I purchased mom a new large-print checkbook register and established the correct balance for her and included the transactions that had not cleared on the August statement so that she could start fresh when she received her September statement.

In the first week of October, she told me that she balanced her account to the penny for September. “That’s great!” I said. “We just needed to get you back on track.” So all was well – I thought – until early November.

She called again in the early part of November to say that she was out of balance and couldn’t find it. I took my computer with my Excel spreadsheet to her house again, and discovered that she had not balanced her checkbook in September as she had said (although she thought she had it balanced), and once again I had more that one month of transactions and numerous notes and scratchouts to wade through in her checkbook register. This is when I knew for sure that something was really going on with my mom.

Over the past few years, I would ride with my mom periodically to see how she was doing with her driving to make sure she was safe for not only her sake but for those on the road with her. She had always driven safely. Toward the end of that summer, not long after her accident, I had her drive home from an appointment I attended with her, and I didn’t notice anything that made me feel that she was being unsafe. My sister and I had insisted a couple of years before this that she not drive on the interstate or to appointments which were further than about 15 miles from her home, which is in a rural area so we didn’t have to worry about her driving in city traffic. But after the isues with the checkbook, and a call from my sister expressing that she felt mom was having some memory issues that were causing her some concern, I decided to let my mom drive to an upcoming appointment that I was to attend with her so I could check her for safety again.

It was like a different person was driving the car. She rolled through stop signs. She was driving 30 mph in a 45 mph zone, sometimes in the “fast lane” impeding traffic. She changed lanes to her left without looking in the sideview mirror or even a quick glance over her shoulder. Once, she changed lanes without checking any mirror at all, even the rearview. She turned wide on a right turn into the oncoming traffic lane. When we got to the doctor’s office and she parked, I reached over and turned the key to shut off the engine and removed it myself. This was not the way I had planned on taking my mom’s keys, but I absolutely could not allow her to continue to drive. I called my sister while she was in the doctor’s office and apologized that we couldn’t do this together as we had planned, but she agreed that it was necessary (and had thought so for some time).

Maybe it should have been done sooner, but I was keeping a check on her, and both my sister and I would talk to her every day on the phone. I could tell she was having some age-related memory issues, but I wasn’t seeing anything alarming. Perhaps Mom was just doing a better job at hiding it from me than from my sister.

My sister and I agreed to help my mom to get to where she needed to be. I would take my mom to church on Sundays so she could continue to attend her service of choice (the early traditional service) and my sister would take her to her weekly Bible study on Thursday mornings. We could each take her to the store for anything she might need on those two days. My sister would take Mom to dentist and hair appointments, and I would take her to doctor appointments.

My mom was not happy with this AT ALL, as might be expected, but as a family we could not allow her to continue to drive knowing she was a danger to herself and anyone driving near her.

This is how I came to attend church with my mom. I live over an hour away from my mom’s home, and her church is close to where she lives. I was confirmed in my mom’s church more years ago than I care to admit. Both my children were christened there, but I haven’t been a member there in decades. The pastor there came to the church after my children were christened, probably about 20-25 years ago. He has raised his family there and the church has grown. My sister and her husband attend there as well and have for, I believe, about the past three or so years, but they attend the “late service,” with more modern music and a band, of which my brother-in-law is a part.

My first service with her was the first Sunday in December last year. Most Sundays I would notice that the topic for each sermon did not necessarily follow from the text. Not that what he was preaching was a bad message – there would just be much more appropriate scriptures for the message he was teaching.

I noticed him twisting what the text of the scripture said in order to make it match what he was preaching. I have found this – what’s the right word here – annoying, disturbing, uncomfortable – these are a few of the emotions I’ve felt during the sermons. Nearly every week I find myself looking up the scripture and reading the verses around it for context or searching the concordance to try to figure out why he thinks it says what he says it says. It came to a point I could no longer ignore it or shrug it off on March 22 of this year, and I’ll discuss that sermon in my next post.

When we got back to my mom’s house after the service and breakfast with some ladies from church, and her weekly trip to Walmart, she asked me what I thought of the sermon. Not knowing yet that my mom definitely had dementia, and assuming that she and I could have a conversation in the same way that we always had, I told her what I thought. She became defensive and argumentative and accusatory in a way I totally did not expect. I was blindsided.

This was not my mom as I had always known her. She raised my sister and me in the Baptist church, with Sunday School (old school style) and Sword Drills and Vacation Bible School and “Deep and Wide.” She’s always known where to find it in the Bible and was always an asset to any Bible study in which she participated. I was shocked that she would blindly accept the preaching just because “He’s gone to school for that and he knows more than you do about the Bible!” (her actual words – I may not have a seminary degree, but I can read – and you’ll see what I mean in my next post).

I had become accustomed to her being angry with me every week because I would not give back her keys, even to the point where I would have to give her a hug and a kiss, tell her I love her, and just say, “I’m sorry you’re angry with me, but this is the way it has to be, and I’m going home now.” But this was different. She was vitriolic and hateful in a totally uncharacteristic way. When I left and got down the road a little, I pulled over on the side of the road and called my daughter, who is a nurse and has experience working in a memory care unit. She explained what was happening, and suggested that I get a book to learn about caring for someone with dementia.

I downloaded a couple of books on my Kindle as soon as I got home and read them over the next two days. I learned about the different types of dementia and some strategies for helping a loved one to “get out of a loop,” which is what had happened to my mom that day. The information was also eye-opening for me about the fact that my mom could no longer safely stay in her home without someone there to care for her. I had been suggesting Visiting Angels for several months because I was concerned that she wasn’t taking her medicine as she should, but she flatly refused to allow anyone to come into her home.

Immediately after I took the keys, I began counting her pills every Sunday. Around the same time that she started having trouble balancing her checkbook, she stopped using her daily pill case. It was a red flag I should have paid closer attention to. We saw her primary care physician in January, but it took four more months to get an appointment at a neurologist’s office, and that was with a nurse practitioner. It would have been six more months before she could see an actual MD (not knocking the NPs – Mom’s NP is fantastic). It took another month to get the MRI scheduled that would give us Mom’s diagnosis – vascular dementia.

I started filling her pill case every Sunday in December, but I discovered that she was taking her medicine more than once some days and going to her cabinet to get more. I removed her medications from her house. Even then she would call to tell me that I hadn’t filled her pill case because she had run out before Sunday.

After her blowup at me that day in March, I knew that we needed to consider other options for her care. My sister suggested that we have her stay for a month at her house then a month at mine, but I felt like that would be too much upheaval in her life all the time. She wouldn’t have a permanent home and would always live out of a suitcase. Her primary care doctor and her memory care nurse practioner agreed that this would be detrimental to her long term care, so I began looking at assisted living facilities.

By the grace of God, she began to research assisted living facilities as well at about the same time. She has a cousin who had recently moved into assisted living, and she had been relating to my mom that it was a good experience for her and that overall she was pleased with the move. I arranged a visit at a facility in my hometown, close to Mom’s church and her friends, and they had a vacancy when we visited. She called me the next day and said she wanted the apartment.

She moved into her apartment in late April, and she’s eating well for the first time since my father passed nearly four years ago. I can tell that she’s actually taking her medicine because the progression seems to have slowed a little, but lately she’s been having bad days more frequently again. It’s really difficult to watch her losing more and more of herself, and even though it’s slowed, it’s still progressing more quickly than I ever imagined it would.

I’m glad that I can be a help to her at this time in her life, even though I can’t take care of her in my home. I still work full time and we breed Dutch Shepherds, so our home isn’t ideal for caring for an elder even if I could be home to take care of her. But she wouldn’t be happy here either, not like she would be at home. It weighs heavily on me, but at the end of the day, it’s been good for her to be around people, especially people her own age who are facing the same challenges that she is. At least that’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.

All of this is to set up for the next three posts I’ll make. Going to church with Mom has become a challenge for my soul. It shouldn’t be this way, but since I’m “being a writer for a week,” I’m going to communicate what’s been heavy on my heart, and the sermons are a huge part of that. And no, I’m not convicted. That would be better, actually, and something to be thankful for.

There’s (still) joy on this journey, on my way home to my Father’s house,
Cindy <><