Page created by: Diane Peachman

It was Mother’s Day, 2006 and my daughter and I went to visit my parents in Sandy Hook, CT. For months now my mom’s tonation was decreasing and it was getting harder and harder to hear her over the phone. I would ask her, “Are you tired?” Or “Are you falling asleep on me?” She would say no. But that Mother’s Day in 2006, as I sat across from her at the dining room Table I couldn’t help but notice the tremors in her hands and the decreased strength, leaving her to ask my father to help cut her meat. I asked my cousin for the name of my Uncle’s neurologist and made an appointment. After the doctor performed the clinical exam, he told her “Well I’d say you have classic symptoms of Parkinson’s . All she asked was am I going to die from this. The doctor replied, “you’ll die With it, but not from it”. My father, who happened to be in the hospital, was about to have lunch and I said let’s go have lunch with Dad. She said, are you kidding? It’s Tuesday! Senior
Discount at Kohl’s! Let’s go shopping!” And that’s how she handled her diagnosis. My father passed in March of 2007. She lived independently until December of 2011 when she took a fall and had to have back surgery for a vertebrae that had collapsed. She didn’t come home until April 2012.. and the only way the discharge planning team would send her to her own home Was with a live-in. Over the next couple of years we would go to the neurologist 3-4 times a years, and in 2016 I started noticing things that she would say; initially I figured this was her dealing with her loss, having someone living in her home and taking care of her. But then she started telling me stories that were unlikely. She was then diagnosed with Parkinson’s dementia. I think the saddest day for me was when I told her I would cut her hair a d she said fine. Then five minutes later, she turned to me and said it’s very nice of you to offer but my daughter visits on the weekend and she will do it over the weekend!” My initial instinct was okay but in retrospect I think I already knew this was going to hurt me more than it would her..

My mom passed March 12, 2021 5 days after her 92nd birthday! She had a live-in who loved her like she was her own mother! She was the reason my brother and I could put our heads on our pillows at night and function the next day at work and the reason fir my mom living until 92 and 5 days!! I thank her all the time.

I know she’s in a better place because to watch someone who had so much life in them and loved family and friends, to watch them turn into a shell of who they were it sucks the life out of you! She smiling again, in no pain and is dancing up there with my dad!!