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Later, inon lengthy conversations with her brother asn’t there, rearranging her massive piles of toilet paper for cooods, which I periodically gathered for donation before she began rebuilding her supply At tis that couldn’t be reclaimed

“We’re going to rily one day, a few e, when I’d flown hoarbage in armfuls from our kitchen trash can and carried it out to the front sidewalk, wild look in her eyes I quickly realized I had better get out of her way She had ti physical hare to where she felt it belonged

Always she had tiry and scared, when she stormed in to wakeI could solve them When she pleaded for help When the entire house was rocked by her tremors

The first six stages of Alzheiical tor its cause Growing up I took care of the practical I did this reat a toll Because witnessinghelpless in front of it, devastated

As a teenager I ed her finances Refiled her taxes, corrected errors in her e refinance Paid the bills, set up installment plans for my middle sister’s tuition Drove her when she didn’t want to drive Did household e I rebalanced her retireether spreadsheet after spreadsheet, researched meticulously, when she needed help she couldn’t request and I couldn’t provide

I took her worries and fears as my own I lived with her lack of boundaries, with physical discomfort as she encroached on my body and , or that? Was that natural? Was that nors I never speak of Her shame is my own

I e, in which physical degeneration takes prie is broken down into even more substeps, in which patients lose the ability to speak, use the toilet, and walk; to sit up, hold up their heads, smile, to s

I wasn’t willing to change her adult diapers I wasn’t willing to bathe her I wasn’t willing to keep having avoidable eranted assistance in caretaking when I needed it, who didn’t help enact encies, who hadn’t even believed she was ill until the proof was undeniable I wasn’t willing to keep losingI can recount, in every agonizing detail To do so would cost tooas I could

So ht only in terms of what my mother wanted or needed of me, rather than what I wanted or needed for myself I served as a vessel for my mother’s desires, rather than as a creature of my own

The best thing I did was finally to say no, to anger and guilt and invocation of duty, and to persist in saying it The best thing I did was say yes, to taking those first steps toward carving a space for myself

I’ve watched rapple with soo, in which she sends photographs of green sunflower seedlings in their srowth I can’t speak for her journey, can only observe it Grief is personal and private We’ve lashed out along the way We’ve found peace, too

My mother had a siued by doubts She had her days when she lashed out And then, too, she arrived, finally, eventually, at some sort of peace When she sat docilely as I made her a simple dinner of chopped zucchini and yellow squash, white rice, and seasoned ground beef When she happily ate leaf after leaf of dried seaweed, covered in sesame oil and sprinkled with salt When horror at life’s possibilities had ceded, when recognition itself passed, replaced by the carnal pleasures of the everyday

My father used to grow angry withentire packets of what’s etables, and meat After he became her caretaker, he was simply happy when she ate

I knohat I didn’t know then: that the disease lasts long enough to exhaust us all of caretaking Of loss No one can withstand the strain alone No one should have to It’s not the effort that’s so defeating It’s the inevitability of the outcome