Tuesday, September 21, 2010

world peace and awareness

Today is World Alzheimer's Day, a day to raise awareness about this devastating disease . Today is also International Day of Peace, a day to remember that we need to work for the end of world conflict and war.

My brain laughed maniacally this morning when I saw both notices. There is no peace with Alzheimer's disease, there is no peace with dementia, at least not that I've seen.

Dementia rips through a person's brain causing havoc and mayhem. Dementia blows up the life of the whole family, causing adult children to fight with each other for "what is best for Dad". Dementia exhausts the resources of everyone it touches: financial resources and emotional resources. There is no peace in a family when a wife screams at this "stranger" who is helping her in the bath; yelling and punching a man she has loved for 40+ years. There is no peace, when this woman in my Mother's body says she hates me.

After Mom is gone, after we've lost the war with Alzheimer's (because Alzheimer's always wins), when peace finally comes to our family, there will be a barren battlefield in our hearts, there will be scorched earth where there should be happy memories of Mom's life.

War is Hell and so is dementia.

2 comments:

rainsinger said...

May peace prevail on earth.

Michele Bilyeu said...

Maria, I am reading your posts backwards in time as I missed most of the years. I am to this one at 6 pm on today Dec 5,2013 and just want to say how much I am feeling, deep deep from all of it. All we go through, have gone through. my mom and I going on 9 9years with Alz. and the hardships of feeding and cleaning her bedridden somehow aren't as bad in some ways to the anger and huge personality change of your mom. We had bits of my mom to the end. My dad had vascular dementia the last maybe 2 years of his life..there I got the anger,lots of blame and the awful outburst from him 3 of my 4 brothers who couldn't handle it all. Total denial of our dads condition because our mom was too hard enough. I am wishing with all my heart we didn't have to go through all of this and that others would just 'get it' and at least try to understand what this truly does to us within our families. Just know that I know, I get it..for you now. I admire you for your fortitude in all ways and I pray that in some place your mom can know..at least on a spiritual level..how much you have done/been/given. God bless.