Summary

The author grapples with the emotional complexity of receiving and keeping photos of their mother in a Memory Care facility, where she is struggling to adjust to a life with diminished independence and control due to dementia and other health issues.

Abstract

The author's mother, who has vascular dementia and macular degeneration, resides in a Memory Care facility where she has been for over a year. Despite the staff's efforts to keep the family updated with photos of her participating in activities, the author feels conflicted about these images. They represent a stark contrast to the independent and vibrant life the mother once led, and the author, who shares many traits with their mother, finds the photos deeply saddening. The mother's reluctance to be in such a facility, her frequent confusion, and the loss of her former self make the photos a painful reminder of her current state. While the author appreciates the care provided, they struggle with the dissonance between the mother they remember and the mother depicted in these photos, often choosing to delete them due to the overwhelming sadness they evoke.

Opinions

The author feels that keeping photos of their mother from her time in Memory Care might not be something they wish to do, as they evoke a sense of loss and sadness.
There is a sense of guilt and internal conflict about not wanting to preserve these memories, with the author questioning if they are a "monster" for feeling this way.
The author recognizes the mother's strong desire for independence and the difficulty she faces in accepting her current situation, which is a stark departure from her previous life filled with work, family, and control over her daily activities.
The mother's dementia has progressed to a point where she no longer understands her surroundings or situation, often asking to be taken home despite her inability to live independently.
The author values the efforts of the care facility's staff but finds the photos of their mother, now dressed in unfamiliar clothes and with a changed appearance, to be a stark and upsetting reminder of her decline.
Despite the mother's physical presence in the photos, the author sees a lack of the spark and personality that once defined her, which contributes to their reluctance to keep the images.
The author acknowledges that their mother is fortunate to have resources for care and that her children visit regularly, but they also acknowledge the inability to alleviate her confusion and fear.

Will I Keep Any Photos of My Mother From Her Time in Memory Care?

Maybe, but I don’t think so

My mother suffers from vascular dementia and macular degeneration and has now lived in a Memory Care facility for more than a year.

My entire family is lucky that we were able to get Mom a spot in a care facility that is close to all her children, and which largely seems to employ some of the most compassionate and loving caregivers and staff we have ever seen. There are many social activities for all the home’s residents, and periodically the activities director will send us photos of my mother attending one of the programs.

I know many families want such pictures, and I appreciate the effort it takes to send them.

Does it make me a monster, though, if I don’t want to see these pictures, and don’t envision keeping them after my mom is gone?

My mother, like many people, never wanted to go to the nursing home or any kind of memory care facility. Like most kids, I never wanted her to end up in one.

But after a couple of years of helping care for Mom in her own home, with my siblings and I eventually trying to cover 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (while several of us were also raising grade-school-age children), we realized we couldn’t do it anymore.

One of my sisters even floated the idea that Mom could come live in her house (and the rest of us could then take turns being with Mom there when my sister had appointments or other commitments), but Mom absolutely refused to even listen to this idea. None of us were surprised by that; one of my mother’s most enduring beliefs is in her own ability to be independent. Even now, a year after living in Memory Care, and at a point in her dementia when she no longer realizes what time of day it is, what season it is, or even where she is, she tells us on a daily basis: “Just drop me off at home. I was doing fine there.”

After Mom got COVID and took a bad fall in the autumn of 2022, however, it became clear that something had to change. It was not easy, but we helped her move, first into an Assisted Living apartment, and then, a scant two months later, into the Memory Care facility that she lives in currently.

And when I say “helped her move,” I mean “we moved her.”

You can currently tell my mom, several times per visit, the name of the facility that she is in, or that she is in a “care home,” or the “nursing home,” but she doesn’t really seem to understand that. (We don’t bring it up — she asks. Endlessly.) She knows she is not in her own home, but she seems to persist in thinking that she is on the worst vacation she has ever taken in her life.

I can’t blame her. I know none of it makes any sense to her.

Even if she were not suffering from cognitive decline, nothing in my mom’s life would have prepared her for life in such an institution. She never lived alone until after my father died. Before that she had always lived with family members, and, through her strong partnership with my farmer father, exerted a lot of control over how she lived her life and structured her days.

Her life was not easy. She grew up on a farm, and she married a farmer. She worked all the time, but she also benefitted from that labor. She and my dad ran a successful dairy farm. She raised six kids, all of whom settled near her as adults. She even started her own business selling produce at a farm market, which gave her social interaction in her later years. She had some health challenges, but nothing chronic or debilitating that impaired her ability to do her jobs. She had control over what she ate and when. She rarely had to depend on others for physical help. She didn’t suffer fools, and if she didn’t like you, you generally knew it.

Now?

Now she goes to a dining room with 30 other people and eats whatever she is served. She sits at a table with three other women who seem mostly to annoy her. She is nearly blind from her macular degeneration and can’t participate in most craft or other activities, and most likely wouldn’t want to even if she could. (“Why are we doing this? Isn’t there some work around I could do?”) She is still mobile, but is suffering from increasing urinary and bowel incontinence.

She is not in control of anything, really, and for a person who liked to be in control, that is soul-destroying.

How do I know this?

Because I am just like her.

I love my mom. For many years in my life, through high school and college and beyond, she was my best friend. We thought alike about almost everything. Even later in our relationship, when some of my ideas and beliefs began to change, we still got along. Hardly a day goes by even now when I don’t remember something bitter or hilarious or hilariously bitter that my mom once said, and laugh.

But then someone from my mom’s facility (or my siblings) will text me a picture of her attending an activity, and although I always look at them, I often delete them shortly thereafter.

Lately I have started wondering, should I be deleting these? She is still my mother, and this is a phase of her life. Maybe, when she’s gone, I’ll be glad to have these pictures that show her “having a good time.”

Sometimes she doesn’t look terribly unhappy. I know she still enjoys her sweets, so any picture of her that is taken at birthday or holiday parties invariably shows her eating her cake with admirable gusto.

But mostly these pictures make me terribly, terribly sad.

To me, she doesn’t even look like my mother anymore. She is wearing the clothing we bought for her when she moved to Memory Care (at home she had been wearing the same worn elastic-waist pants and flannel shirts with holes in them for years — “I’m going to die before I need new clothes”). Now she wears what I think of as her “institution” pajama pants and other interchangeable pants and brightly colored soft knit shirts that she didn’t pick out herself.

Her hair is cut short, so her ears and nose look more prominent than they used to. Her hands, which had been such strong and square worker’s hands, even up until six months ago, are increasingly frail and clenched. She has started to take more falls (another horrifying aspect of aging), and sometimes the pictures reflect bruises and black eyes.

Mostly, though, there is no spark in her eyes. In a lot of the photos, her mouth is set in a thin, serious line. She looks in the photos exactly how she sounds when I visit — unhappy, angry at her loss of control, anxious to go home (which will never be possible), and desperately lost.

There is no huge tragedy in this situation. Mom is lucky enough to have a warm room and her own bed and largely compassionate caregivers, and it is a testament to her hard work that she has the resources to pay for those things.

She is still my mother, and still the “same person” she always was. All of her kids coordinate our efforts, so one of us is at the home to see her every day. At those visits, we do all we can to try to keep her feelings of confusion, anger, anxiety, and fear at bay.

But I don’t think we succeed.

I think the pictures are proof of that, and I can’t bear to look at them.

I don’t think I’ll ever look at these pictures with anything but overwhelming sadness. Until that changes, I will just keep hitting “delete.”