memories

Some photographs take you back to a specific moment in time with all the memories attached to it.

This photo from May 23, 2020 showed up on a Facebook memory. It's not a great photo. I caught it after a rainstorm blew through and gave a break in the sky for some sunset colors to close the day. On my Facebook page I captioned it, "Loving the light after a rainstorm and having fun with reflections." A lot of friends gave me the good ole thumbs up on the pic and caption.

May 2020. This was during the time of the COVID shutdown. At this point in her life, my mom had been in assisted care for six years, the last three being in memory care for her Alzheimers.The Alzheimers progression and the COVID isolation caused Mom to be very agitated and aggressive, she hallucinated and felt threatened, and was violent. One day, I received a call from Mom's Hospice nurse. I could hear Mom yelling in the background as the nurse told me that Hospice recommended that Mom go on comfort care. Talk about feeling the weight of the world.

After talking with my siblings and as much as difficult as it was to make this decision, we decided that comfort care was the route to go. And because this was an end of life matter, all of us were able to go into the care facility at the same time and be in the room with mom for as long as we wanted. Sometimes we were there as a group, other times a few. We talked to Mom, reminiscing about our favorite foods she cooked, vacations that we took, her involvement with the schools we attended, just being a wonderful mom and grandma. 

May 23 was an all day rainy day and we took shifts visiting Mom. One of my brothers and I visited her after dinner and as we talked about the rainy day, we laughed at how the weeds would grow like crazy in the gardens, how her gardens were always so beautiful, how the birds loved splashing in the puddles, and the fact that her room looked over the soccer field where she watched her grandsons play during their high school years. Our hearts felt as dreary as the cloudy, gray sky but at the end of the day the sun brightened the sky, was it a sign that we made the right decision? I don't know but it felt like a sign that she would be in good hands as she passed into the world that she believed in.

Today marks five years that she has been gone. In 2020, Memorial Day fell on May 25. Mom was part of the Greatest Generation. She was very patriotic and thought the American flag was the most beautiful flag in the world. Because of the holiday, flags adorned the grounds at her care facility, flew from the front porches of many homes, and lined many of the streets around town. Such a perfect send off.