[TIMELINE: OCTOBER 2021]
By October, my sister was having a difficult time navigating pretty much everything in the assisted living side of her facility, according to the director of Resident Services. Peggy was not good in public spaces either, Maria had told me, noting that Peggy often appeared to be looking for something—or trying to figure something out—and couldn’t.
Apparently, hand-wringing was a pretty common occurrence, too. I’d witnessed some of that personally, so I knew everything Maria was telling me was true. We sketched out a plan for Peggy to move to the memory care unit the week of October 11.
Maria suggested that I tell Peggy the news in two phases: first on the phone, without being specific with her about the timing, and then in person the day it was happening.
After speaking with Maria, I immediately called my sister to tell her that the move was coming up soon. It did not go as well as I hoped.
An hour later, Peggy was still locked into a verbal loop of “I haven’t done anything bad! My Alzheimer’s isn’t getting worse! Who’s doing this to me?” as I tried to calm her down. She felt like she was being punished for “being bad” and I just couldn’t get her to understand that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Then she promised she would “be good” if only we didn’t send her to memory care. It was excruciating. Not for the first time that year, my gut reaction was: Kill me now.
I hated that she thought we were punishing her. I didn’t even try to convince her of the severity of her Alzheimer’s. Arguing with a person with dementia (PwD) will always lead to madness.
Afterwards, I tried to focus on the practical. There were a lot of logistics for us to take care of before the big day. We needed to downsize by a lot—Peggy was going from a one-bedroom apartment to, basically, a dorm room, complete with roommate.
She had never lived in such an arrangement, so it would be a big adjustment for her. We needed to get her a twin bed, find a home for her kitty Chloe, and let everyone in her life know about the move. We also had to decide exactly how much of her stuff she could actually bring with her, and what would make the cut and what wouldn’t. We expected it would be a nightmare.
As the day grew closer, I very gently told Peggy again about her upcoming move to memory care. This time she accepted it all without complaint. I honestly didn’t know what she really thought about it—because, at this point, she couldn’t really tell me.
Finally, moving day arrived on October 13, 2021. Those of us on “Team Peggy” were apprehensive, but we all put one foot in front of the other and got it done.
I brought Peggy’s friend Sue over to keep her occupied, and that that helped quite a lot. My sister and Sue were pretty close, and Sue is very empathetic, a great combo when finessing a situation involving a PwD. The two of them sat outside the facility in the front courtyard. It was such a beautiful sunny fall day, with mild temperatures and a slight breeze. They spent the entire time looking through the scrapbook I had put together of our Italy/Sicily trip. Sue told me later that Peggy just couldn’t stop talking about that trip, especially our walking tour through Pompeii and Herculaneum, our visit to the Vatican, and her favorite part: our days in Sicily.
By mid-afternoon, we were almost three-quarters of the way done going through Peggy’s apartment, and selecting what furniture and personal possessions would be going with her to memory care. Peggy also got to see her new room for the first time, and she seemed to be more or less okay with it—there were tears, but no full-on meltdowns. Personally, I thought the new space looked surprisingly good, considering that it was essentially a dorm room.
[Years later, Michael told me that Peggy’s room was set up so nicely that memory care staff often used it to showcase what the bedrooms looked like in the unit. They would let caregivers of prospective residents take a peek as if it were a model home in a new neighborhood!]
Ultimately, it took us two full days (and a lot of help) to complete Peggy’s move from assisted living to memory care. My cousin Michael, and my partner Jon and I teamed up as the first phase moving crew; our task was to take the furniture out of Peggy’s facility apartment and deliver it to new homes. Some special things went to relatives, like Peggy’s beloved “wine jail” and the coffee table that had belonged to our parents, while a few other items, like her desk and chair, went to charity. And one ratty old rocking chair headed straight to the dump.
To handle the second phase, I hired Caring Transitions, the same company who had first moved Peggy from our parents’ house to her assisted living apartment in 2019. They took care of packing and moving almost everything else for us, like Peggy’s clothing, photos, and other personal possessions. They helped us get her favorite items set up in her new room in memory care, then took the rest to storage, to friends and family, and to charity.
We got no help at all from my brother Les during this time. None. It was a stellar performance, of course—honestly, his obstinance had to be seen to be believed. But I hadn’t expected much. Months earlier, I had asked him to be on the lookout for a new home for Chloe, and he shut me down immediately. He said he couldn’t help me with that, but “best of luck.” Yeah, thanks.
It wasn’t much of a surprise that he offered us no help with Peggy’s move, either. But I was taken aback a bit that he refused to pitch in on even my smallest ask: I had found a flute during the big clean-out, and it now needed a home. Since Les is a professional musician, I wondered if he might have given it to Peggy, and if he now wanted it back. I texted him to ask, and he was completely unhelpful. If he didn’t want the flute, fine, but he also refused to help me find it a new owner. So the flute became just one more detail I had to be responsible for, on top of everything else.
Worst of all, Les didn’t even ask how Peggy was doing. He seemed completely disengaged.
Amidst all this change and drama for Peggy (and for us), Chloe had a big move in store for her, too. I had cast my net far and wide and ended up finding a great home for Chloe even without Les’ help. We got really lucky—Chloe’s own vet had recommended the perfect person. Julie was not only a big cat lover (like Peggy and me), she also works in elder care for a neighboring parks department! I thought: Double yay! Not only would she be able to take great care of Chloe, but her experience with PwDs meant I could freely discuss with her why Chloe needed a new home, Peggy’s situation, and what we were going to tell Peggy about everything.
I explained my plan: We would tell Peggy that Chloe was being boarded at the vet while she adjusted to memory care, and we’d just keep telling Peggy that forever—or until she forgot about Chloe altogether. Julie was completely on board with this. She also told me that she called that kind of plan a “compassionate fabrication.” I loved that term! I still do. For a long time, I had been thinking of my tall tales and verbal evasions to Peggy as bald-faced lies, and that weighed on me. I much prefer “compassionate fabrications,” because they really were.
Peggy settled into her new memory care digs without too much fuss, though once the reality set in that she was going to be there for the foreseeable future, she had a few meltdowns.
One particularly bad meltdown, unfortunately, occurred barely a week after we moved Peggy into memory care, while Jon and I were driving back home to Washington. We were about a half hour outside of the town of Yreka, California (about five hours away from my sister’s facility), when Peggy’s friend Angelique called me, concerned. She told me that Peggy had phoned her, and was crying so hard that she’d never heard anything like it. Angelique and I both called the memory care staff to try to find out what was going on and if something had happened. To our relief, they were already on it, and were helping to calm Peggy down.
Finally, Jon and I made it to the Randolph Collier rest stop near Yreka, at exit 786. (If you’re ever heading north on Interstate 5, stop there. You’ll be glad you did.) I wanted to be parked in that specific place before I called Peggy. I needed to see the river, the trees, and all manner of restful, peaceful things—and that rest area has them all. Grounding myself at this beautiful place had become an important bit of self care amidst all the stress of my sister’s illness.
By the time I got Peggy on the phone, she had calmed down quite a bit, and her thought processes seemed relatively clear. To my surprise, she told me that, in spite of her bad morning, she was actually glad to be in memory care, and she liked the staff there. She also said—and hold on to your hats for this—“I wish I had moved here sooner.” That was not on my “Peggy moves to memory care” bingo card…but it was really, really nice to hear.