Loss: A Path to Ascension
Part 2: Alzheimer’s Disease is Proof of Evil
Something happens to your brain when you enter menopause. It’s like a software update. After the restart, a lot of things look different. It’s not a bad thing. For me, menopause started absolving me of some crippling guilt.
After my father died, there was no time for grief; I had to sort out my mother’s care and wellbeing. Her Alzheimer’s had progressed rapidly with the stress of my father’s final year and passing. One day she was talking to me about her grocery list; the next day, she didn’t understand how I knew my brother. It was like being punched in the gut with the end of a baseball bat. I felt the air leave my lungs.
Every time I began to grapple with how I was going to care for my mom, my dad’s words would fly around my brain, “I’m so worried about your mother. Who is going to take care of your mother?”
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
My mom had a Baptist upbringing with Sunday School and Wednesday night Bible study on the weekly calendar. She married my father two months after high school graduation and one month…
