[TIMELINE: OCTOBER 2021]
Once we got home to Washington, I tried to call Peggy again to see how she was doing but couldn’t get through to the memory care’s land line at an appropriate time. (She had lost her cell phone just before our last visit, and it was still missing.) Nevertheless, I persisted, and finally reached her just before dinner. She was okay, but still not great, and very unsettled. Difficult moves to memory care are not uncommon, but by the time I hung up with her, I was starting to fear that we may have to go back down and see her in person—and soon.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what went down. Ten days later, my partner Jon and I were back in the car and headed to California to see Peggy again. (Maybe I was a long haul truck driver in a past life!) But it was clearly the right decision. I was really glad we went back to see her.
Earlier that week, as my partner and I debated whether or not we should buy Peggy a new phone, we got a lucky break. The memory care director called to say that Peggy’s old cell phone had been found. I had tried to track it down during our last visit, but the “Find My” app on my sister’s iPad indicated only that it was still somewhere in the memory care unit. It was a bit of a mystery. The director had put her staff on alert for it, just in case.
What actually happened was sort of wild. It turned out that another resident had found the phone in the memory care unit’s living room and thought it was her TV remote—so she brought it back to her room! The truth was discovered when that resident couldn’t actually control the channels with the phone, and the facility sent a TV repairmen to “fix” her “remote.”
Now that my sister had her phone back, our visit was a great opportunity to streamline it for her. First, we removed all of her remaining apps. We had already removed most of them but now the only thing Peggy could do with her phone was make and receive calls, and only to and from the people in her favorites list. We did the same to her iPad. We locked her down solid!
Obviously, most residents in memory care don’t have a phone. In fact, by the time they move into memory care, they don’t even know what a phone is! But comparatively, Peggy still had pretty high cognition, so she was one of the rare residents still on the grid sporting a relatively new iPhone.
So we survived our first taste of what life could be like in memory care: iPhones as TV remotes. Check. My partner Jon and I just had to laugh.
It was a productive visit in a few other ways, too. I was able to help Peggy get her Covid booster shot over at the assisted living side of her facility (rather than have her go with a stranger). While we were there, Peggy got to see a bunch of her old friends. And she told them that, even though she hadn’t wanted to make the move to memory care, it was actually a good place for her, she wished she had moved there earlier, and the staff was good to her. She said all of that unprompted by me, so I am confident that’s how she genuinely felt. I felt so, so good about that.
She and I also talked about her friend Tahoe, with whom she used to perform in the band Blondes Leading the Blind. Peggy told me that Tahoe also had Alzheimer’s! Which was somewhat shocking, since she was even younger than Peggy. Peggy was worried about her because Tahoe now lived in a rural area of the country and was often unable to get the care she needed.
That was a lot to process, so thankfully I had an appointment scheduled with my therapist, Katy, during that visit. Another topic on our agenda was Peggy’s kitty Chloe, who was flourishing in her new home. I was looking for guidance: How should I discuss Chloe with Peggy? My sister asked about her all the time. Peggy always had cats, they were always hugely important to her, and she had always taken good care of them. So of course she was concerned about Chloe! She wouldn’t be Peggy if she didn’t care. So Katy helped me come to a conclusion: There may come a time at some point when I’ll have to come clean about Chloe—but not now.
Since I was in town, I made sure to meet with Peggy’s finance guy at her bank. We updated all of her financial directives and instruments to provide for the next phase of her care. We also reaffirmed our overall financial plan, so I felt good about that, too.
Before my partner and I headed back home, I had one more thing planned to take care of for Peggy. Outside each of the memory care resident’s bedrooms is a little shadowbox, and the staff had asked me to find photos and little mementos to put inside hers that would help remind Peggy of her past. So on this visit, I brought a range of family photos—plus some little models of iconic characters from The Walking Dead, like a little zombie girl with her teddy bear. Peggy really liked that show, and she still could sort of follow the plot, as messy as it was.
So although initially I was reluctant to make the drive down again so soon after our last visit, I’m so glad we went. Peggy’s mood was much improved, and she was much calmer. I think a lot of that can be attributed to the simpler environment she was living in now. Plus, I think seeing that her friends were still coming to visit her, and that me and Jon were still there looking after her, made her feel like she could believe all of us. We weren’t going to throw her away and forget about her. She didn’t voice her abandonment concerns this time at all. She had seriously looped on it at times in the past, so her not bringing it up was a big win.
Visiting Peggy was always a mixed bag for me—I was always happy to see her, even when I spent most of my time calming her down. There was never a time when I didn’t want to see her. But I was always on guard waiting for that anvil to drop from the sky onto my head. I had to steel myself every time I walked into memory care. My happiness at seeing my sister was always mixed with my apprehension that I would have to manage an upsetting situation.
But this visit? It was the first time in a long time when I felt like I didn’t let Peggy down. When we got in the car to leave, I didn’t feel guilty about driving away like I usually did (never underestimate Catholic guilt). I actually felt pretty good as we began the drive north.