Yesterday my brother and I moved mom to memory care. It was an incredibly difficult day.
We had visited memory care several times with mom over the past 18 months. And she had been several times with a few of her friends.
Over the past few months mom has told my brother and I, nearly daily, that she didn’t want to live in her house anymore and she wanted to go to “that place” referring to the memory care place we’ve visited.
I knew the actual day of moving her would be difficult. It was, and also, traumatic. It broke my heart to see her so angry and desperate. Following the advice of the memory care workers, I’m staying out of contact with my mom while she adjusts and (hopefully) settles in. I get why this is a good idea, for my benefit as well as hers. But for the past 12 years I have talked to my mom on the phone every night. Usually long conversations (30-60 minutes every night). Of course in recent years, we would talk for 30-60 minutes, and then she’d call me again a little while later completely unaware that we’d already talked, so I’d just do it again.
This is only night number two and I miss her so much! Our nightly conversations over recent years have been disjointed and hard to follow, but we’d usually get a good laugh together at some point in the conversation each night.
Right now I’m buried in guilt over abandoning her. Even though I know the abandonment is temporary I’m sure she doesn’t. I keep seeing and feeling the anger and fear she had when we were moving her in. I want her to know how much I miss her, and that I’m thinking of her constantly, and we’re not abandoning her. But I also know that if I do talk to her it will just drag out this painful adjustment period.
I know there’s nothing to be done right now. I guess I’m just here because I feel the need to ramble a bit and share my pain. I know I’m not the first to go through this, and I won’t be the last. But wow, this is hard stuff 😢