One month into the pandemic, someone close to my mother called to inform me that she was losing her memory. Thirteen months later, after about a thousand hours of logging into bank and credit card accounts, grappling with six years of unpaid federal income taxes, and calling doctors and lawyers and faxing POAs, I was finally able to see her. Six days before I arrived, she made a trip to an emergency room that she has no recollection of visiting, received prescriptions for medications that she urgently needs, and managed to lose those prescriptions, causing another person who is close to her, who has been vital in helping her make it through the weekends, when the bookstore she’s owned for twenty-five years isn’t open, to tell me that it’s time to put her in assisted living. Which is something she absolutely does not want. And I don’t want. This week I learned that my mother values her independence more than her health.
Hard trip
Hard trip
Hard trip
One month into the pandemic, someone close to my mother called to inform me that she was losing her memory. Thirteen months later, after about a thousand hours of logging into bank and credit card accounts, grappling with six years of unpaid federal income taxes, and calling doctors and lawyers and faxing POAs, I was finally able to see her. Six days before I arrived, she made a trip to an emergency room that she has no recollection of visiting, received prescriptions for medications that she urgently needs, and managed to lose those prescriptions, causing another person who is close to her, who has been vital in helping her make it through the weekends, when the bookstore she’s owned for twenty-five years isn’t open, to tell me that it’s time to put her in assisted living. Which is something she absolutely does not want. And I don’t want. This week I learned that my mother values her independence more than her health.