WRESTLING WITH THE STAGES OF CAREGIVING

Experts say there are 3 Stages of Dementia and 7 Stages of Alzheimer’s & Vascular Dementia. Did you know that there are also Stages of Caregiving?  Some say 5 stages, some say 6, - it’s the transition between recognizing your loved one has a problem, coming to grips with the issues, caregiving taking over many and most aspects of your life, getting help, and finally letting go. 

I recognized certain emotional stages in my writing about caregiving. The first one for me was anger. My mom came to live with my husband, 2 kids, the dog, and I in March 2020, the first week that everything shut down for COVID-19. We knew she had early stages of dementia, but she up to that point had still been living on her own. Our main goal was to protect her from contracting coronavirus, but it wasn’t long before we realized we also needed to protect her from herself.  When I go back to some of my journal entries and writing at this point, it seems to come from an agitated author. The pieces reflect the complicated relationship I always had with my mother. It was exacerbated by the fact that the particular behaviors of my mom that always boiled the blood of her daughter were not going away.  Why could my mom still look up at my hair and say, “Where’s your brush?” Why did she remember her fashion standards, but not the word for “broccoli” or “yogurt”? I was also self-centered and fuming that in the middle of a pandemic with a broken dishwasher and 5 mouths to feed, my mother the amazing cook forgot how to use a stove, and a microwave let alone all her recipes. Very privileged, middle-class issues, I know, but I was scared of the pandemic and I wanted help. I needed my mom.   I share these writings now because it has taken me this long to forgive myself for feeling this way and I know a lot of caregivers out there are struggling with these issues as we speak.