When Life Happens

My mother’s Alzheimer’s has progressed to the point where my brother, who lives with her and is her primary care giver, needs support from the rest of the family more than ever.

I provide emotional support for him as well as physical help and find myself making the eight-and-a-half-hour drive to her home more frequently than ever. Of course, the word-count of the novel I’m working on has suffered in the process. But Mother is a top priority right now.

Alzheimer’s is a dark and frightening disease, and it’s difficult to find silver linings in the clouds that overshadow everyone in the family. But my brother and I have found one in that our relationship has grown remarkably closer.

We thought we already had a good relationship. And we did. We always got along well. But there are five years between us, and I married and left home at a very young age, when he was just a pesky kid brother (I’m the oldest of five siblings and he’s next to the youngest).

While he was in school, he lived overseas with our parents for a few years, and when stateside, we still lived 1600 miles apart. He joined the military after he graduated high school, and, aside from a few brief intervals, we hadn’t lived in the same state for many years, so we never got a chance to really get to know one another, even as adults … until our mother got sick, and we began caring for her together. To this day we still live eight and a half hours away from each other.

When we were kids living at home, to my self-centered shame, I never caught a glimpse of the amazing man he would grow up to be.

But, today, all that has changed. Despite the heartbreak and challenges of caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s, caring for our mother together has been one of the most wonderful things that has ever happened for our relationship. We found that we have so much in common that in between in-person visits, we talk on the phone for hours every week. Thank God for digital phone service and cell phones (remember the days of analogue landlines and long-distance charges?).

It’s almost as if I’ve discovered a brother I never knew I had.

About the Author: Most of my columns (I have several!) are focused on the issues I write about, but I rarely write about what’s going on with me. This is the place for me to get over that and get to know my readers … and for my readers to get to know me. Do you have experience as a caregiver? Tell me about it in the comments.