Some people enter our lives and leave impressions that will remain. Sally was like that.
She loved life. She loved people. She loved animals, yoga, walking, music, art, and color. She especially loved her precious family and her lifelong friends.
My team and I had the privilege of knowing her in her final years when dementia made care and support a necessity. She was still 100% her beautiful, loving, gracious self, but was losing the ability to manage the details of her home and her life.
And that is where we came in: we had the honor of managing the details of her life, providing the care and support she needed, in a caregiving-by-stealth manner. In other words, we became her companions, while preserving her sense of independence and dignity and providing the care she needed at the same time. She lived alone in her own home until the final four days of her life.
The real privilege, though, was in knowing her. In hearing her, for example, accuse her daughter’s art students of stealing things from her home (people with dementia have to blame someone when they can no longer remember that it was them who moved things within their home), but then a minute or two later, hearing her say, “But it’s not worth making a big deal about it, because my daughter is family. So, I will just get over it.” How much better the world would be if more people extended the same kind of grace to more people, more often, as Sally did.
It was our privilege to walk with her and to allow her to walk alone when that was her wish (she never wandered…she knew exactly what her goal was…to go out and walk by golly!) and to keep her safe by monitoring her GPS watch and staying nearby so we could swoop in at any time.
It was our privilege to give her the dignity of turning us away when we rang her doorbell when she let us know she was busy with her people. We saw that she was well and were able to monitor her safety via cameras in her home.
It was our honor to use DAWN Dementia Specialist strategies to provide the companionship and partnership she needed to still engage in what she enjoyed: going to yoga classes, going to the senior center, for scenic drives, watching the dogs at the dog park, going to visit her daughters, FaceTiming with her son and his family and her dear friends, and more.
When I first met Sally’s daughters, they shared that their Mom was fiercely independent. I am proud to say that even though dementia was changing her life, her “life” didn’t change much. She would say, “I’m so glad my daughters let me live life my own way”, even though she had 24/7 caregiving-by-stealth care.
Her daughters were very much our partners in this season of Sally’s life, as were her beloved friends. Friends near and far who sent her letters and called her and visited her and FaceTimed with her.
Sally passed from this life in her own home on Sunday, July 31st, after resting comfortably in a hospital bed for less than thirty-six hours. The Friday before, she had walked with supervision to her favorite park just down the street. It didn’t matter that she needed complete assistance to get home because everyone knew that she was receiving the ultimate gift…living life her own way and passing from this life her own way…even with dementia.
We don’t have to lose our loved ones to dementia. My team and I got to enjoy Sally as her real and beautiful self, without cognitive clutter blocking our view.
“You touched us all, Sally, and we are so glad we got to know you”.
With sincerity and affection,
Jill
