Five and a Half Years

[TIMELINE: August–September 2022] By August, I felt like I was close to burnout. I think the biggest reason was that for months I had been constantly pretending to be something I wasn’t, or feel something I didn’t. On the phone with my sister, I’d work hard to maintain a pleasant, positive tone, always. And when … Read more

[TIMELINE: July–August 2022] Heading into July, I was emotionally worn out. Any one of the things that had happened in June was not a big deal by itself, but there were so, so many of them that they added up to a larger-than-normal emotional burden for me. It was also becoming even more important for … Read more

[TIMELINE: June 2022] At the beginning of June, Covid finally reared its ugly head: Peggy tested positive. Ugh. The day after the facility staff told me this, they also admitted that 11 out of the 19 residents in memory care had also tested positive. Yikes! I wasn’t happy to hear it, but not all that … Read more

[TIMELINE: May 2022] In May, our quiet reprieve came to an end as Peggy’s condition progressed—although, as with all of her previous Alzheimer’s symptoms, her new issues first appeared gradually. By the middle of the month, my sister’s spatial relationship to objects (and to herself) had really changed. One afternoon during a visit, I took … Read more

[TIMELINE: February–April 2022] During the next six weeks, we finally enjoyed a bit of a lull in the chaos of Dementia World. A big reason for this was that the sertraline seemed to be helping Peggy a lot. Previously, she had said she was so afraid that she “couldn’t do anything in her room.” For … Read more

[TIMELINE: January–February 2022] Despite January’s downward spiral into some weirdness and drama, I thought we were holding things together pretty well. By February, however, the tables had turned—and in a very bad way. Just like during the “walker incident” a few weeks earlier, we needed multiple members of Team Peggy to figure out what was going … Read more

[TIMELINE: January 2022] The first week of January started out fairly quiet and calm—but then “Team Peggy” faced a few troubling events in quick succession. The first of these was that my sister forgot what had happened to her beloved cat, Jezebel, who had died more than six months previously. Peggy asked one of her … Read more

[TIMELINE: November 2021–January 2022] After being in San Jose for a few days to help move Peggy into memory care—and then our trip back there a few weeks later to help her adjust a bit better—it felt good to return home again and finally de-stress for a minute. But my respite was limited, because talking … Read more

[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 … Read more

[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 … Read more