I wrote a diary about my Sis' dementia and how devastated I was about it April of 2014. That diary enabled me to let out the pain I was feeling at the time.
The community here gave me an incredible amount of love and comfort. My quilt has been a constant companion as I watched my Sis move further and further away until she stood on the edge of forever.
My Sis is gone. It has taken me twenty three days to be able to write these words. She left us on September 16th. She died peacefully in the early morning hours. Her weakening heart saved her from the dementia that was making her life a living hell.
In my other diary I wrote of her fear and anxiety and I wanted so much for it to go away and for her to find a calm and constant center. She did find a constant center, unfortunately it was anger. She became what she never ever was before, a mean and angry woman.
Her anger grew as she became more incapable of living alone, it blew up into a nightmare of bitterness and fury when we had to move her into an assisted living center. She had reached the place where every minute of her being alone was a real danger. We came together as a family and chose a very nice place for her to live where she would have someone keeping an eye on her and seeing that she ate and showered.
God! She hated it and us for moving her there. She threatened to run every day, no idea where to, but run she would. Sometimes we would go to visit and find ourselves berated from the moment we walked in, sometimes she threw us out. She got really good at throwing me out, it hurt so bad that I would run from the room.
Towards the end the anger faded and total confusion replaced it. Whenever I would walk in her room her eyes would lock on mine and I could see her searching for recognition. She always made the connection, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I knew she would forget who I was, who her daughters were and she would be all alone.
Meanwhile her heart was weakening. I believe it was from all the shocks and the adrenaline that she lived on because of her children's deaths and her husband's strokes. That weak heart was her salvation. It took her from her shrinking world and saved her.
I'm learning to live with the finality of knowing I will never see her again. I had really lost her long before, but illogical as it is where there is life there is hope and now that is gone.
She is gone.