My Mother Doesn’t Remember Me
That is the reality that led me to write this book. During my mother’s last two years of life, as she passed away with dementia, I kept a prayer journal and wrote essays about the experience. She passed away in 2003, and although it's taken me this long to get these reflections compiled and published, I see now that others are benefitting from my story.
My book, Almost Home – How I Lost My Mother Without Losing My Mind: A Faith Journey relates the personal and poignant story of how I dealt with the emotional minefield my mother’s “long good-bye” created. If you or a loved one is experiencing a similar situation, you may find this book a comfort.
Online purchases are being handled by the publisher, Husky Trail Press.
Praise for Almost Home by Teresa M. Norris -
"In this tender, brave and most revealing spiritual account, Teresa Norris gently guides us through the often unsteady and confusing emotional terrain adults encounter when facing the loss of a parent. With an admirably chronicled journal as a tool and her deep reliance on faith, she envelops us in a richly protective fabric for our journey. Through knowledge and spiritual strength we are delivered from our first anxious awareness of a parent's incipient dementia, to a place where we can attend to our parent's growing needs with more relative comfort and hope. Through tender care of self, love of family and faith, we emerge more accepting of our deepest, most conflicted feelings, acknowledging our parent's transition unmistakably as a part of life itself."
"A rich source of inspiration...enlightening...full of wisdom and hope, this book is invaluable for the adult child, support groups, students, clergy and professional caregivers everywhere."
Kathleen L. Hayes, MSW, LCSW, ACSW
"Certainly very personal essays are Teresa’s strength as a writer . . . These are so good, so articulate, moving, sometimes sorrowful and sometimes witty and always true . . . so personal and so honest . . . (This) memoir is a series of short, sometimes cynical, sometimes funny, sometimes sad pieces, always poignant . . .”
Jordon Pecile, Professor Emeritus, U.S. Coast Guard Academy
(Note from Fr. Brian: I thank you for sharing your faith journey in this difficult period in your life. It helps me to put things more into context when I'm approached by those experiencing similar journeys.)
"This book makes real the common human experiences we all encounter with caring for aging parents. It effectively describes the ups and downs of a daughter trying to cope with her mother's dementia, the fear of letting go, and the fear that she won't remember her the next time she walks through the door. All this is described in the context of life's other pleasant and unpleasant surprises and musings. And it’s all described within the context of the author’s faith, which may not have answered all the doubts, but gave her strength to travel this road with her family. It’s the human experience we all deal with, but Teresa provides us words to put flesh on the bones to what we are feeling inside."
Reverend Fr. Brian Romanowski, Pastor, St. Patrick Church, Mystic, CT
"A rich source of inspiration...enlightening...full of wisdom and hope, this book is invaluable for the adult child, support groups, students, clergy and professional caregivers everywhere."
Kathleen L. Hayes, MSW, LCSW, ACSW
"Certainly very personal essays are Teresa’s strength as a writer . . . These are so good, so articulate, moving, sometimes sorrowful and sometimes witty and always true . . . so personal and so honest . . . (This) memoir is a series of short, sometimes cynical, sometimes funny, sometimes sad pieces, always poignant . . .”
Jordon Pecile, Professor Emeritus, U.S. Coast Guard Academy
(Note from Fr. Brian: I thank you for sharing your faith journey in this difficult period in your life. It helps me to put things more into context when I'm approached by those experiencing similar journeys.)
"This book makes real the common human experiences we all encounter with caring for aging parents. It effectively describes the ups and downs of a daughter trying to cope with her mother's dementia, the fear of letting go, and the fear that she won't remember her the next time she walks through the door. All this is described in the context of life's other pleasant and unpleasant surprises and musings. And it’s all described within the context of the author’s faith, which may not have answered all the doubts, but gave her strength to travel this road with her family. It’s the human experience we all deal with, but Teresa provides us words to put flesh on the bones to what we are feeling inside."
Reverend Fr. Brian Romanowski, Pastor, St. Patrick Church, Mystic, CT
Book Excerpts
Journal entry, August 1, 2002
I was watching a brief segment on a TV news show and the subject was Alzheimer’s. A woman’s daughter began to say how she missed her mom who has the disease and how her mom used to hug her. I immediately started to cry. I mean it sort of amazed me how right “out there” that emotion was. It was total empathy and total recognition of my ongoing grieving . . .
De’ja-vu All Over Again (Essay, 2/20/2003)
Despite alarms sounding several weeks ago—thus the Hospice involvement—my mother apparently has reached some sort of holding pattern. My fond and emotional farewells can all be repeated because she isn’t dying, at least not now. That this does not particularly comfort me belies my heart—hurt or hard, I cannot say.
I just know that as I sat there through another three-hour visit, I felt caught in a time warp. It was last fall. No, last summer. No, last spring. I felt as trapped in time as my mother is. Instead of feeling grateful that I still had her, I felt the continuing sadness and loss I have felt for well over a year.
I haven’t had her truly in all that time . . .
Maybe This Time (Essay 11/1/03)
. . . That my mother’s departure from this earth was once more being delayed came as no surprise to me. That she was in bed was different, but I had braced myself for this. So I headed to her room as soon as the door opened.
A wizened creature, raisin-faced and insanely thin, lay in the bed where my mother was supposed to be. I had been considering just this phenomenon as I drove the two hours to get here this morning. My mother, I’d decided, had been removed from me about two years ago. In her place was this pathetic stranger who, although her voice was remarkably still my mother’s, when she spoke, her words were not. And her body was surely not.
My mother had been small, a short and chubby lady with wrinkled skin, but a ready smile. This person who lay in her bed seemed to sink into the mattress, though not with weight, but waste. Plastic tubing invaded her nostrils as a nearby machine hissed and bubbled in its noble task. Fresh oxygen supplied to a ninety-year-old woman who has been asking to die for the last two years.
I approached the bed . . .
I was watching a brief segment on a TV news show and the subject was Alzheimer’s. A woman’s daughter began to say how she missed her mom who has the disease and how her mom used to hug her. I immediately started to cry. I mean it sort of amazed me how right “out there” that emotion was. It was total empathy and total recognition of my ongoing grieving . . .
De’ja-vu All Over Again (Essay, 2/20/2003)
Despite alarms sounding several weeks ago—thus the Hospice involvement—my mother apparently has reached some sort of holding pattern. My fond and emotional farewells can all be repeated because she isn’t dying, at least not now. That this does not particularly comfort me belies my heart—hurt or hard, I cannot say.
I just know that as I sat there through another three-hour visit, I felt caught in a time warp. It was last fall. No, last summer. No, last spring. I felt as trapped in time as my mother is. Instead of feeling grateful that I still had her, I felt the continuing sadness and loss I have felt for well over a year.
I haven’t had her truly in all that time . . .
Maybe This Time (Essay 11/1/03)
. . . That my mother’s departure from this earth was once more being delayed came as no surprise to me. That she was in bed was different, but I had braced myself for this. So I headed to her room as soon as the door opened.
A wizened creature, raisin-faced and insanely thin, lay in the bed where my mother was supposed to be. I had been considering just this phenomenon as I drove the two hours to get here this morning. My mother, I’d decided, had been removed from me about two years ago. In her place was this pathetic stranger who, although her voice was remarkably still my mother’s, when she spoke, her words were not. And her body was surely not.
My mother had been small, a short and chubby lady with wrinkled skin, but a ready smile. This person who lay in her bed seemed to sink into the mattress, though not with weight, but waste. Plastic tubing invaded her nostrils as a nearby machine hissed and bubbled in its noble task. Fresh oxygen supplied to a ninety-year-old woman who has been asking to die for the last two years.
I approached the bed . . .