I subscribe to Suleika Jaouad and The Isolation Journals. I love her insights, and her prompts encourage me to think, and sometimes write.

Today, “Write about being gentle with yourself in grief. Maybe about a time you extended yourself grace. Maybe about a time someone else showed up and helped you pack (literally or figuratively). “

It was March 2022. I simply could not care for Mom anymore. I wanted to, and I couldn’t. I felt defeated. Her Alzheimer’s had progressed to a point that I didn’t know how to handle. She had started escaping at night, and when I tried to bring her home she would physically assault me. I thought everything was fine (enough) until the night she threw a mug of boiling tea at me. Things weren’t fine.

I visited several facilities. Each one felt more depressing than the previous. I was already feeling guilty for “giving up,” for preparing to move Mom to a facility. Each place I visited simply intensified that guilt. Until I visited Tore’s Home. It was small – only six memory care units. It felt like more of a home than a facility. I made a deposit and I planned to move Mom in mid-March.

A dear friend helped me meet the movers at Tore’s Home. They unloaded Mom’s bedroom set, clothes, and other things that would hopefully make this new place feel like home. As I unpacked boxes, my friend offered to go out and get lunch. She came back with a sandwich from Flat Rock Village Bakery. I don’t know that I’ve ever tasted a sandwich so good, prior or since. It was that act of caring, of providing sustenance when I most needed it, that I acknowledged as an act of love. She silently sat with me as I cried, wishing I could have done more, knowing I had done as much as I could. She gave me the gift of grace.