I've kept a journal of Grandma's journey these last several years. I wanted to document it, though I really have no idea why. I guess I just wanted to be able to remember how this... this God-awful thing called Alzheimer's progressed and how we as a family reacted and adjusted. This is a journal entry from June of 2008, when Gran started wandering at night and my mother (the main caregiver) was exhausted and at the end of her rope. We finally began to face the unthinkable... putting Gran in a nursing home. ` Bhlogger
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WHAT I WANTED
I wanted it to be like in the movies. You know, where she wakes up and there is Papa or one of her best friends or her mother and father, there to take her home... home to that peaceful happy place beyond the light where we see all our loved ones and friends and old pets and we get to do all the things we ever wanted to do.
I wanted to lay beside her in her last minutes and be able to tell her how very much it meant to me that she was always there for me no matter what and how I would be eternally grateful for the pure and unconditional love she gave to me. I wanted to tell her that I will always remember the nights in front of the Christmas tree with all the other lights turned out and how she always let me lick the icing out of the bowl.
I wanted to sit with her one night at the kitchen table sharing a tub of Blue Bell ice cream and chatting about silly things and then wake up the next day to find that she'd passed away quietly and painlessly in bed in her own home.
Life is rarely like the movies, as most of us know. But ya know, I was kinda holding out for this one. Even some kind of watered down version of it would have been ok.
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