My mother’s dementia forced me to enter into deep paradoxes — to lose my mother while she was alive, to encounter the stranger in someone I had known all my life, to face the double bind — and respond the best way I could at the time.

Years ago I delivered my mother under the guise of a doctor’s appointment into a memory care facility. Without the familiar context of the home she knew, the familiar routines and ways of being, my sister and I lost the mother we knew all our lives. I mourned and grieved for my mother in 2014 while she was alive. We had to let go of all that used to be – no expectations – and learn how to be present in the moment.

I recognized my mother was constantly encountering the stranger – whether it was staff, memory care residents, family, friends, or even me. She lived in a strange land of not knowing, uncertainty and loss. (I only had to visit it.) Yet, she consistently demonstrated simple acts of kindness and care to the stranger. There were times she didn’t know who I was but she would extend hospitality. Was I hungry? Did I need a meal? Did I need a place to sleep? I dismissed these questions during the earlier visits when I was missing “my mother” and wanted “her” to be present. I knew she couldn’t make the meal or provide a place for us to stay in memory care.

Generosity Continued to Live in Her

Somehow I recognized the generosity that continued to live in her. I learned to listen and see more deeply, not measure or judge, and heard her extend genuine care. She was a friend to the stranger and often that stranger was me.

It was hard to be “the stranger” to someone I knew all my life, but by stepping into this new terrain, I learned more about love and vulnerability. Near the end, in moments of unexpected clarity, she spoke about the importance of love and joy. Her eyes sparkled with light. (Never did I dream I would see that light again during the early years of dementia when the dense fog arrived.) She taught by example. She loved the stranger and that stranger was me.

The Stranger Floated in This Week

This was not the writing I planned to publish this week but the stranger floated in (perhaps because I published Look with Eyes of the Heart, Not of a Stranger). I remembered the early years when I measured my mother by how close she remained as my mother (what I knew her to be). Many times I wasn’t taking a deeper look with my heart. I was looking at the Global Deterioration Scale and trying to determine where she fell between mild and moderate cognitive impairment.  The look with the heart was so painful. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. 

Being the stranger, yet finally seeing with the eyes of the heart made a difference. This year, as I wrote in Recognizing the Gifts, I sifted through my life experiences these past five-plus years. I have learned that what I encountered during the caregiving years hasn’t all gone away.  The intensity is different but I still experience uncertainty and upheaval, encounter strangers, wait for longer periods than I prefer, sit with the mystery in so many different ways, and marvel at the simple beauty in life. This is all part of the creative meander.