Day One Down!

Oh my---I have been working on moving Grandma back to her lakehouse since Thursday evening. I'm already exhausted physically and emotionally and the real moving day is technically tomorrow. Fortunately, I have everything moved back to the lake except for the furniture--that was a huge JOB!!! And have all those lovely things of moving down--the rest of the accounts terminated, got her a new driver's lisc., etc. etc. The most unfortunate part of today is that we discovered that her days of driving are probably over....that will be a huge transition for all of us. Her because it's taking away more of her freedom and us because we will have to go get her all the time. Fortunately my parents live like 25 minutes from her.....I live an hour away but we'll figure it out. I took her to the doctor today and he had a fit when he found out that she had been driving. Since she has the signs of dementia it's now on her health records and if she would get in an accident she would get sued..... That was a hard conversation for her to hear but I was glad to be there with her when she heard it otherwise she might not follow through. Fortunately, at the lakehouse there are a lot of places that she can walk and do things with that community of people and fortunately she can still walk well. As soon as the doctor told her that the rest of the day was not very good because she shut down on me and didn't want to do anything for herself--that's my biggest fear that she will fall back into a place of dependency using her memory problems as a crutch instead of fighting for it. I had to remind myself all day today though how blessed we are to still have her here and that we are back to this point--she will never be the woman that I used to know and I have to work through that and accept that for the rest of her life that we will always be taking care of her instead of her taking care of us. :) I kept reminding myself today that this experience undoubtedly will make me a better mother one day because it has taught me so much about caring for someone selflessly even when an 83 year old acts like a 6 year old in the grocery store........