The Long Good Bye is my attempt to chronicle the humorous and often hard challenges that face those who are caregivers to a loved one who has Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. I call it he Long Good Bye” because this disease slowly robs you of your self. It changes the person you have always been. It eventually robs you of your personality and your memories. For those who are taking care of a loved one with dementia, it feels like you are giving a very long good-bye. The positive part of all of it is that you as the caregiver have this chance to record the memories while they are still there, love the person in the midst of personality changes, and assist them as they make this difficult journey.
My purpose for writing this blog “The Long Goodbye” is partly for me – so I can record the memories, recall the lessons, and encourage a positive mindset for myself and my family. Its purpose is also for others who are somehow involved in saying The Long Goodbye to a loved one or friend.
I hope this will not be a depressing blog, but a way to record the humorous and the melancholy, the challenges and the victories, as well as the benefits of living with someone as they travel this journey into the sunset with one long good-bye.
browjan
Browjan's Blog: The Long Good-Bye 
Sorry to sound cynical, but you should know the positive part isn’t always the way you describe it. Some people have terrible parents. My sister and I have no good memories of our surviving parent. You describe emotional and spiritual rewards, but just once I would like view a Christian article about how a Christian adult caregiver can deal with their emotional responses in an extended eldercare situation for a parent who was abusive, narcisstic, mean, selfish their whole lifetime, and now needs us due to their aging conditions but has the same nature or worse. Our moral obligations and their physical care needs are the same and the end does not seem to be a good one.
By: Jane Doe on June 15, 2010
at 1:39 pm
Jane, I don’t think you sound cynical. You sound realistic. I need to share more of the challenging moments because sometimes it is very hard to see anything positive. For the most part, it helps me to do this with an eternal perspective. It is one thing to turn the other cheek to an enemy who you see for a half hour, it is quite another thing to show love and compassion to that enemy on a daily and hourly basis. I recall Viktor Frankl who was in a Jewish concentration camp during WW II. He describes in “Man’s Search for Meaning” his method of finding good in the most evil of circumstances. He said, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.”
and
“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.” This is what I hope to do, because the truth is that what is is and while I am helpless to change the situation, I have the freedom to change myself.
God bless you for taking care of your parent in spite of how you were treated. I believe you will be greatly rewarded.
By: browjan on June 15, 2010
at 3:37 pm