Walnuts

It was somewhere around the fifth or sixth spoonful of Grape-Nuts I was feeding into my mother's mouth that it hit me.

I can't do this anymore. And it's ok.

And during each spoonful after that one (the fifth or sixth), I pieced through the journey. I guess you could say I sort of stepped back and looked at the chain of events that had led me to that moment--sitting next to my mom, in what used to be HER chair, feeding her spoonfuls of soggy Grape-Nuts as she sat in her walker (because, as of yesterday, she no longer can maneuver from her walker into the chair). I remembered the falls, the surgeries, the trips to the ER, the sleepless nights, the changes in her medication schedule, the setbacks, the injuries, the progression of her dementia to where it is now.

"And here we are now", I thought to myself. That next step was suddenly so clear, so logical to me.

You know those key moments in your life when the significance of a single decision hits you like a sledgehammer? This was one of those.

I kept the spoonfuls of Grape-Nuts coming. We sat in silence for many minutes--me cogitating; Mom......well, I'm not really sure what she was doing. But at least she was quiet. (A welcomed relief from the last ten hours during which she wailed incessantly for "MARION!" and then "GRANDMA!" from around 10pm last night until around 6am this morning when she finally, FINALLY, dozed off for a couple of hours.) Yeah. At least it was finally quiet in the house.

During a couple of spoonfuls, I wondered if I really WAS doing the right thing--admitting I cannot continue to take care of Mom and making the decision to place her in a facility. Maybe she's not as bad as I thought, I thought. Maybe it was just a bad night, I thought. Maybe she'll die soon, I thought. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I was scraping up the last few mouthfuls of cereal and Mocha Mix with the spoon as I continued to examine all the options I thought I had. I remembered the caregiver suggesting months ago that Mom (and I?) might be better off where she could get round the clock care. Then the doctor suggested it. Then the cleaning lady suggested it. Then the bath-aid, then friends....

The many minutes of silence were abruptly broken by Mom's singular question. Asked oh-so innocently, and with perfect clarity, and using every functioning neural fiber left in her over-medicated brain.

"Do you like walnuts?"

Sometimes, validation comes from very strange places.