Today is Mother’s Day.  And if I’m honest the last 5-6 years of caregiving have felt like mother’s day.  Perhaps how she felt as a mother to me and my brother.

But today is different.  We’re not sitting in church, getting flowers, doing very much special things.  We tried to go to church but mom felt she was too exhausted.  And she probably is.  She literally wakes up 50-60 times per night (literally, I counted one night) every night on good nights and 130-140 times on bad nights.  And she just doesn’t wake up.  She wakes up scared, terrified.

They tell me to put her on medicine.  But the medicine that is “right for her” causes night terrors.  Do we exacerbate a severe problem?

They tell me to put her in a home and get on with my life.  With memory care issues, the MINIMUM is $10k per

gotta run…she[‘s crying

I’m back.

We don’t want to put her in a home.  And even if we did, the minimum is $10k per month.  Minimum.  Who can afford that?

People try to offer “solutions.”  It’s exhausting talking to people who have the “solutions” and “have we thought of…”?  Yes, we’ve thought of it.  We’ve tried it.  There’s reasons can’t.  And it’s exhausting telling the long line of people why.  I’m grateful for your concern.  But trust God in us.  More importantly pray for us.

We need a Simon.  Desperately.

Simon.  As in the Simon who carried the cross for Jesus when it got too hard even for the Son of God.

So this mother day I haven’t bought flowers.  I’m so far beyond exhausted being up at night that just telling her Happy Mother’s Day is about all I can muster.

I hope we can take her to lunch but I’m not sure she is in a good enough state to do so.

It’s a different kind of mother’s day.  A sacrificial one.  One where my mom is on the couch and it’s hard to understand past her mumbles what she needs.

And it’s still worth it all.   Every bit of it.

Because at the end of the day I love her.

She is my mother.