Hey, you aren't supposed to forget me yet!

A note to my friend, Molly, an Alzheimer's caregiver who passed away unexpectedly in January. I always shared moments like this with her. It's a habit that's hard to break …

Dear Molly,

Here's my most recent posting on Facebook:

My dear friend went to visit my dad-in-law Sunday while I was out of town. As she sat out on the porch with him watching traffic go by, Pepaw told her that his son Roger & "his girlfriend" come over & visit him a lot. I knew this was going to happen. I leave for one weekend. All right, Roger, who's your girlfriend?!?!? Alzheimer's … I choose to laugh now & save the tears for later.

So, how did I do? I think the spontaneous humor was quite clever and cute, and you know I can't pass up a good joke. But the best thing about it was that it was natural and real laughter from deep within my heart. Lord knows I always looked for a sliver of humor to try to lift you on your toughest caregiving days when Alzheimer's shattered your beloved Joe's memory one vicious blow at a time …

Did I work through my sorrow and pain well?

Thank goodness for shirt sleeves to wipe my tears because I'm too lazy to get up and get a tissue!

As midnight creeps past me, I've decided wisely not to run over and see Pepaw in the morning and shout: "After all I'm doing for you, you can't remember that I married your and Meemaw's oldest son and gave you a grandson? Dementia is stealing you from me way too fast! I just got you up here to take care of you, and two months later, you think I'm just his girlfriend! Hey, you aren't supposed to forget me yet! What's with you?!?!"

Okay, Molly, you're the only one to hear me rehearse those words just once, never to be heard again.

Continue to reassure me that it's okay to shed a few tears here and there … much easier to absorb than a flash flood. It's okay to laugh my way through this unexpected memory slip because I'm not laughing at Pepaw: I'm laughing at life, choosing to rise above it rather than let it beat me down now. If I can weather these smaller storms with humor and compassion, it will be easier to handle the emotional tornadoes that will attempt to pummel me down the road.

I still laugh at the great story you shared with me about Joe:

Joe was sleeping this afternoon and when he woke he heard the lawn mower. Thought I would get the front lawn mowed while he slept. All of a sudden I heard the sound of a motor coming from the back yard. I stopped my machine and went to the back yard to see Joe mowing the back yard with the snow blower. Guess what? He was going in perfectly straight lines and the blower was not digging up the grass at all. Before long the snow blower ran out of gas. I told Joe that something was wrong and we would have to wait until our son could come over and fix it. Nice to know that eventually it runs out of gas, stops and gets put away!

Thanks for showing me that there are still many, many reasons to savor and save the funny moments!

Love you!
Monica

P.S. And thank goodness we don't have a snow blower!