The Guilt Trip Abroad

The 90 minutes that changed how I deal with guilt.

“Meredith, I don’t want this to affect your life. You have so many good things happening and I want you to go and do them. Understand?”

My mom was experiencing 90 minutes of “lucidity” when she said this to me.

Which is a total mind fuck.

Because when you have dementia, they give meds to slow down the progress of the disease.

But after taking her meds 6 hours later than usual this day, she was more clear than she had been in months. To be more “lucid” because you didn’t take your meds is so confusing to me.

Unlike most days, for these 90 minutes, she knew she was sick. She knew that something terrible was happening to her that we couldn’t fix.

And she was fucking angry.

I don’t blame her. I was fucking angry too.

She didn’t recognize my dad’s name on the calendar we keep in the kitchen. She asked to be shown their marriage certificate.

That part happened before I was in the room with them. I think the look on my dad’s face might just have killed me if I had been there for that.

Once she kept denying knowing her husband, Dad finally came outside to get me.

In the moment, he needed reinforcements. In the moment, it made me feel connected to him in a way I hadn’t felt before.

Yes, Dad. Let me help.

We had moved abroad six months before this and I was visiting them for a few weeks in the US so I had not witnessed this kind of break down myself yet, even though I had been preparing myself for it for years.

See that’s the thing with dementia. It’s a million tiny little losses.

My mom was fucking irate. The woman who rarely said the “F” word was yelling and cussing and extremely upset.

She demanded to know why she was never told about her sickness until now. She was convinced that she was just finding out this weekend and that I was the daughter that got the “short end of the stick” to come and tell her.

The truth was that we have been aware of her decline for over 5 years. All of us. She had been monitored and tested and medicated to do anything possible to slow down this monster that was eating away at her, bit by bit.

But in this moment, she couldn’t understand why the doctors can’t help her.

She cried as she pleaded to understand why being a “good girl who studied + worked hard all her life” was ending like this.

Why she can’t be left alone ever. Why she can’t do anything she used to enjoy anymore.

And then the bad got worse.

“I’d rather be hit by a truck. Just slit my wrists. Might as well put me in the electric chair.”

I wanted to be sick. Hearing her say those things made me want to crawl into a hole. I don’t know what could be worse than hearing your mom suggest detailed ways she’d rather die than live like she was living.

My mom, child of the 60s, who went to college and became a pharmacist when most of her friends just became wives and mothers, felt stupid. She felt dumb.

She was also worried about who else knew. She felt shame. She wanted it to be a secret. She didn’t want anyone to know.

She cried while she wished she could hug her parents again. I watched a 73-year old wife, mom + grandmom crumble into a child who just needed the love and comfort of her parents, long gone.

And then she said…

“Meredith, I don’t want this to affect your life. You have so many good things happening and I want you to go and do them. Understand?”

I sobbed.

The guilt of moving away when she was only getting worse was always the biggest struggle of our move to Portugal.

I’m convinced to this day that the reason I was there to witness this painful episode was to hear those words come out of her mouth.

A clear reminder of her blessing to move abroad, to live life bigger, to go do the things that she may have been scared to do in her life.

To live for now because we don’t know what “later” will look like. To not take anything for granted. To live in gratitude every damn day.

90 minutes passed. Her meds started to kick in.

It was if nothing had happened. The words and the tears and the pain just swept out to sea with the tide.

And Dad and I standing on the shore, trying to process, trying not to cry, trying not to be angry with the world for what my mom is going through.

I gotta say. It’s a fate worse than death to me. And I’ll believe that until the end of time.

I used to try to forget the 90 minutes ever happened. I tried to push that pain so far away.

Ironic, huh.

Now, whenever I am feeling guilt about being further away from my family that I’ve ever been in my entire life, I recall it on purpose.

I remember that blessing she gave me. I think about what she may have done differently in her life if she had known this would be her fate.

I remember that the cliche is real. Life is short and we have to live big now because we certainly aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. Or if we do get a tomorrow, we also are not guaranteed the quality of that time.

I write this as I make my way home for a visit.

I nervous and scared to see my mom. To feel all the holes. To force myself to experience what our new normal is for her.

But what I can always hold on to are those words she said to me and know that I’m doing exactly what she wanted me to do.

Living as big as I can.

[me and mom]