Page created by: Elizabeth Garcia

My Mom was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1998, I really didn't know much about it so I wasn't really worried. As I did my research, I realized that this disease will eventually be debilitating. And it was. Mom's symptoms slowly started worsening. Tremors, unsteady on her feet, stiffness, all because of this terrible disease. But, she pressed on, walking as much as she could for exercise, changed her diet, kept working as a book keeper. She was doing fairly well until 2012. Mom started having hallucinations, scary hallucinations. She kept seeing people in her house that she didn't know, it frightened her to the point she ran next door to my Uncle's house. They came to Mom's thinking someone was actually there but they found no one. This continued and got much worse until we had to move her in with my older sister, Trish. She also moved in with me for a while until it was just too much for all of us, Mom needed round the clock care that we were unable to provide. Her neurologist eventually diagnosed her with dementia. So, we made the difficult decision to place her in a nursing home at that point. She remained there and, after a hard transition, seemed better with a more structured daily living. She definitely had her ups and downs with adjusting medications and would become combative at times but we felt it was the best decision for her. She began deteriorating the second week of May 2018 and, eventually, passed away on May 18, 2018. My Mom was a prisoner in her own body and would have never wanted to live the way she was living, unable to care for herself, needing someone to feed her, etc. This wasn't Mom at all, we lost her a long time ago. My Mom is free now, no longer bound by this horrible disease. She will always be beautiful and will always be able to dance the cumbia whenever she wants now. I was being selfish not wanting her to go, but she was ready. I take comfort in knowing she's smiling now.