Can totally relate to this.. Lost my Mam in September. She had lived with me since 2017 and there'll always be the empty chair here in my home., as well as the empty feeling in my heart.
I just HATE this insidious disease. Can there be anything worse than watching someone you remember as vibrant and competent be reduced to something so helpless and absolutely foreign to you. All you can do is sit back and watch it happen. The doctors keep their bodies going, but can do nothing to stop them from losing their brains..... I ask why??
Your memories brought some of my mom's memorable presence, too. Mom was well-known for her orchids. She had colorful orchids and took more care of it than us kids. We always knew that mom's orchids were the love of her life. Whenever I see orchids now, I think of mom. If I see an unusual one, I find myself thinking that mom would have loved to add that to her collections.
Mom was also well known for making delicious cakes and pies to every party. She was a great baker and cook. We girls would spend most of the night before the party helping her make large cakes: Red velvet cakes, carrot cakes, prune cakes. Then there was the cheesecake pies, the tutti-frutti pies and lemon meringues. Everything was home-made - even the crusts. People still, up to this day, talk about her pies and cakes. And relatives still trying to get from us mom's secret recipe for her most desired tutti-frutti pies. Mom was great at looking at recipes and then changing it to her taste. Once she perfected it, she would make it over and over with consistency.
The nice thing is noting how much you all love your mom and miss her. My FIL had major dementia the last 3 years of his life, though he retained his lovely, loving personality. Just no memories or awareness of present day and recent years.
We are living this experience right now. My Dad is placed and Mom is still at home, though with an early Alzheimer's diagnosis herself....and the hardest part for her is that my Dad is not there with her "sitting in his recliner". She cannot remember, or has chosen to block out, all the negatives she was dealing with when he was last at home. The last year he was there, was very hard on her with his behaviors. But, she talks about 'the empty chair' a lot...and being alone, and eating alone. I try to positively say to her that he is 92 yrs old and still alive, and relatively happy and she can go visit him, so at 88 yrs old she is not a widow as all her friends are....but it doesn't really help. Is it harder to experience the actual death of someone or the 'slow death' of this disease....where you still have the person....but not really the person, as you knew them? I change my feelings about this from day to day. It's a very hard disease to live with.
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The Empty Chair That Alzheimer's Left
helpless and absolutely foreign to you. All you can do is sit back and watch it happen. The doctors keep their bodies going, but can do nothing to stop them
from losing their brains..... I ask why??
Mom was also well known for making delicious cakes and pies to every party. She was a great baker and cook. We girls would spend most of the night before the party helping her make large cakes: Red velvet cakes, carrot cakes, prune cakes. Then there was the cheesecake pies, the tutti-frutti pies and lemon meringues. Everything was home-made - even the crusts. People still, up to this day, talk about her pies and cakes. And relatives still trying to get from us mom's secret recipe for her most desired tutti-frutti pies. Mom was great at looking at recipes and then changing it to her taste. Once she perfected it, she would make it over and over with consistency.
Memories of the person who was once was....