I can't remember last Mother's Day. I was probably too overwhelmed at the changes happening. I had gone to Florida to be my mom's full-time caregiver in January, and on May 1, my husband and I closed her house and brought her back to Ohio where we live to spend the summer. I was wracked with 3:30 am insomnial fears, concerns, plans, contemplations, hopes, dreams, anxieties. I was mentally walking her though the house, seeing my cats attack her paper-thin skin, imagining her getting lost on the way to the bathroom in the dark, feeling at a loss to meet her medical needs, and most of all dealing with her anticipated reluctance to leaving her dear Floridian home for the first time.

A year has come and gone like a flash. This week we are closing up the Florida house again and getting ready to fly to Ohio on Mother's Day weekend. I'm doing it alone this year without my husband's help.

Although we are a year further into dementia, and I am making this journey solo with Mom, I am so much calmer this year and deeply grateful for the progress. It was much easier to close up her house last year than I ever could have dreamed. We have wonderful neighbors who treat her house like their own. My sister, who lives nearby, comes often to see that all is secure.

Last summer I redecorated my daughter's room to suit my mom. It is now filled with her own clothes and photos of my dad and family, and it waits for her.  Last summer we attacked every medical problem Mom had, so now she has a full compliment of doctors and facilities who have her medical records on file. YEAH! And even though her dementia is deeper, lasts longer, and can be so much sadder to observe this year, I am incredibly thankful for having "the homework" done and the anxieties gone on the things I can control.

So Happy Mother's Day all; to being alert and calm; to leaning into the current moment, to breathing; to sleep.