When A Parent Has Alzheimer’s: Caregiving In Midlife - Sarah Vosburgh

Caregiving Enters The Midlife Story

This is almost 20 years old now, as far as going through this process is concerned. I don't think a lot of people go through much of a different process as far as watching a loved one kind of lose their personality and their abilities. But there's a lot more information out there.

Welcome to the Midlife Rebel Podcast. It's time to rewrite the midlife story for women who refuse to be put in a box. Because maybe midlife isn't a crisis. Maybe it's an awakening. Midlife comes with a whole host of identity shifts. Career, relationships, our changing bodies, and empty nesting, to name a few. And then, sometimes unexpectedly, another role appears, that of the caregiver. Many women find themselves supporting aging parents, partners, or family members at a time when life already feels full. It's a part of the midlife journey that can bring some of the biggest challenges we may face. My guest today, Sarah Vosberg, knows this experience intimately. Sarah is a psychologist and writer whose reflections on caregiving eventually became the foundation for her memoir. What began as late night memories written down for herself grew into a book that speaks to the emotional complexity of caring for someone you love. And today we're going to explore the reality of caregiving in midlife, what it asks of us, how it changes us, and the parts of the experience that aren't often talked about. Thank you so much for joining me, Sarah.

This is a privilege to be here.

Sarah’s Family Context And Sandwich Years

It's really good to have you here. It's a hot topic, actually, in my friendship circles and the women that I spend time with. They're starting to take care of their parents. And actually, specifically, um, in a similar experience to you, do you want to kick us off by sharing a little bit about that process? Well, you know, I've got lots of questions because I think it is a really relevant topic. But um, yeah, a little bit about your story to get us started would be great. Sure.

You know, we all like to think that our story is unique. And um my mom was on her second marriage, my dad had died a few years before, and she was married, and her spouse was not really interested in caretaking or thought he was caretaking when he wasn't really, and um, also was in denial about what was going on. My grandmother had had Alzheimer's before my mom, um, and I was old enough to have been privy to most of that experience um and the angst that my mother went through about it. So I had a little bit of a roadmap about my mom's attitude about how one should be treated when one was in this phase of life. And then I'm an older parent. So I was in a sandwich, um, a sandwich generation between raising my um tween and teen daughters and taking care of my mother at the same time. And it was a very full time in my life. Yeah. Wow. So that sort of sets the the background, the context.

Alzheimer’s Resistance And The Driving Fight

Yes, yes. And I think that um it would be really great for you to share your experiences specifically with Alzheimer's and and what you went through with your mum. Um, because that is seems like a really common experience for the women that I'm talking to at the moment. Parents who or mothers, especially actually, that that have um been given the diagnosis of of dementia. And the the difficulties that that process um yeah uncovers, I guess. Um because well, it is challenging on so many levels. Not only are we kind of not expecting to have to take care of our parents, but the disease itself makes it particularly tricky, doesn't it?

It does indeed. You know, I had a professor back in the day in um grad school who used to say parenting is an amateur business. And I'd like to add to that and say that parenting our parents is an amateur business. And I was ever so much the amateur when I went through this. Um my mother fought it. I think she thought she could tough her way through it, and she couldn't. When I saw things happening, I remembered from what had happened with my grandmother. And so there were things that I was hyper aware of and couldn't get any help for them. Like I went, we had the same PC, we had the same PCP, the same doctor um, you know, provider. Uh-huh. And I would say to the doctor, Look, I have these concerns about my mom, you know, so on and so forth. And she would say, you know, your mom's lovely. And if you're worried about her driving, just drive her somewhere. Or if you're worried about her doing this and such, do it for her. Well, my mother was not a do-it-for-you kind of person. And she wanted her independence, and she was angry, like really angry that this was happening to her. And she never wanted to lose control, and she never wanted to admit to it. And it was really hard up against that, and up against her husband, who was in a fair amount of denial and thought that she could talk about in the book is her drive. Oh, I sought everyone out for her help with her driving because she insisted that she could drive. Driving meant independence to her, which it does to many of us or most of us. Um, losing our autonomy and not being able to drive ourselves places is a big deal. You want to go to the post office when you want to go to the post office, and you don't want to have to wait two days for somebody to take you or two hours, whatever it is, because you've always been able to do that. And my mom uh saw that as her independence, and she drove left on the road, which um isn't done here. Um so she was a danger to herself and others. And I said to her doctor, I said to her church, uh, you know, I talked to the police station. I did everything I possibly could and kept getting put off. The police told me to go to motor vehicles. Um, motor vehicles, my mother wouldn't go to motor vehicles for for an evaluation of her driving because there was nothing wrong with her driving as far as she was concerned. But she was indeed dangerous. And she did get to the point where she was willing to have me drive her places or her husband drive her places. Um, never in an oh, you don't want to drive, I'll drive kind of thing, just like, I'm going that way too, you want to come, um, kind of a thing. And she bought it, but she was absolutely insistent upon wanting her keys. And we were terrified that she was gonna hit the road um one day with her keys and her car, and she was gonna do damage to herself andor others. Um, and we we were scared. And we kept, I kept trying to introduce the notion of not driving to her, and she was wild about it. Like, just you are not taking my keys, you are not taking my independence, you will absolutely not do this. I mean, this is the woman who was leaving her house because there was a strange man there. She didn't recognize her second husband at that point for you know, however long it was four hours, 24 hours, four weeks. It ranged um in there because things come and go with Alzheimer's. And she took a walk down a secondary road, which was really very dangerous over a hilly terrain and so on, and was found in the center of town by one of her neighbors who offered to give her a ride home. But back to the car, the keys, the keys, the keys. I need, I need my keys. I have to have my keys. Um, you know, you are not taking my independence from me. And it was my husband who's a step back. You know, he didn't have he wasn't right up with his nose in the middle of it. He was, he had his nose in the middle of how I was feeling about it. And he was a tremendous support to me. Um, and he said, it's just about her keys. If her keys are in the drawer, it'll be okay. And I didn't believe him. But we left her keys in the drawer and we took the um battery out of the car and put a note in the cavity where the battery goes that were somebody to open the car, which she would never do because a lady didn't do those kinds of things. Um, if someone were to look in there, they would have a note that say that that would say that the driverslash owner had dementia and to please contact our local garage. And um the dude at the garage said, I've done this many times for many people, and I was like, Well, who would know? How do you know? How would I have known that? Like, there's no information out there that would have told me that. So here I was parenting a parent as a complete amateur, and then finding out that other people had done similar kinds of things. So that I would say it was indicative of the entire experience. And then I went through it. This is this is almost 20 years old now, as far as going through this process is concerned. I don't think a lot of people go through much of a different process as far as watching a loved one kind of lose their personality and their abilities. But there's a lot more information out there. So one of the things that I did all the time was contradict her on things that she said that were wrong, which is not the thinking anymore. You just go along with it as best you can and change the subject if it's necessary, um, which were not things that I did. And that was a source of frustration for both her and for me. And looking back on it, I feel badly about it. But I didn't know I was an amateur. So yeah. And then there was forgetting things. She thought my daughters were her daughters, and she couldn't remember our names, and she couldn't remember how to get somewhere. She didn't remember the foods that she liked. Um, friends. Yeah. It's gosh. So that um she didn't remember how to get dressed.

Yeah.

She would put her bra on over a sweatshirt. Right. Or put on two blouses or two pair of pants. Yeah. It's beyond being forgetful, isn't it?

Getting A Diagnosis When Mum Refuses

It is. So many uh things came up for me then when you were talking. Um I'm just really curious about what I seem to have seen with um friends of mine who have gone through similar or are going through the beginnings of a similar experience to you with a parent being diagnosed. And that resistance from the parent. But your mum had already seen it happen to her mum. Did she uh have any kind of awareness when she was first diagnosed of the things that might start to happen and therefore put uh put things in place to make some choices, I guess, before it was too late.

Doesn't sound like it, but that's a long answer. Yeah. So for starters, my mother wasn't diagnosed until weeks before she went into memory care. And by then the dementia was like well, well advanced. But you knew. I absolutely knew. She refused going to the doctor, she refused talking to the doctor about it. Her doctor was oblivious, she avoided the doctor, she I mean, on and on and on. Um I finally got her. The neighbor who had picked her up in the center of town when she walked down the secondary road, um, was a pathologist at the local university hospital. And he said, This isn't right. And I said, I know. Um, and he said, Well, how about getting her in to see a neurologist? And I said, I can't get her to go, she won't go. And she'll she fights me, and I would have to literally pick her up and put her in the car, which I probably could have done at that point because she was 978 pounds dripping left. I was very aware of her need and desire to have her dignity protected. So because I had the connection that I had with her neighbor who I'd grown up around, who knew her, who worked at the university hospital, he said, Let's get her to the hospital and see the neurologist. And I said, She won't see the neurologist. And he said, Oh, I'll take care of that. So he invited her to lunch at the hospital, and she had lunch with him, and then the neurologist came over to chat with her and basically evaluated her while she was sitting at the table. Oh, wow. Um, and then he convinced her to walk down and see her office and her lab and so on and so forth. And she did that and uh and uh evaluation continued from there.

How long had you been taking care of your mom or had you started to see this hap like this process happening? How long had that been going on before that moment when you um your mom saw the neurologist?

My mom died when she was 75. She'd been in memory care for almost a year. And I want to say it started with judgment issues between 60 and 65.

Really? Wow. And did she ever talk to you about her experience with her own mum or not? Was it kind of brushed under the phone? Well, I lived it with her. Yeah. But did she ever kind of reflect on that or not really?

Memory Care Relief And System Frustrations

Just um your grandmother wanted, or your grandmother did, or your grandmother said, never put me in a place like this, or whatever. Um yes, but no. But her example was my roadmap. You know, she was very much about protecting dignity and so on. So I protected her dignity as best I could from afar when she's married to someone and living with him, and I'm not there. I'm I'm living in my own house with my own family. Um one of the things that she talked about all the way from her 30s, probably, um, until she couldn't remember that it was important to her, was that she wanted it that if she felt that she was losing it mentally, that she was going to take her own life. And she even bought a book about how to do that. It was called The Final Exit. And it was um all the all the thing back in, I don't want to say late 80s, early 90s. She had it on her coffee table in her library. Um she insisted that that's what she was gonna do and that I was never gonna have to deal with it. And I used to argue with her about what I would have to deal with and how that might feel, and so on. And she was like, it's my life, it's my decision, this is what I'm gonna do. I don't want you to ever have to deal with my deterioration. So I knew that this was not something that she wanted.

What was your relationship like with your mum leading up to during and then once she um went into care?

Did it shift? We had a lovely um early and mid-tweenie. I had a lovely early and mid-tweeny relationship with her. My um teens and twenties were very difficult. Okay. My uh 30s were hard because she thought she knew how I should live my life and raise my children to an extent. Um, and that was difficult, and she was beginning to fail at that point. And so it was it it had always been I loved her, I knew she loved me. Um some of that, I suppose you could say was duty. Um I really I look back on things that my mother did for me when I was a youngster or when I was in my teens, and the things that we used to do together, like gardening and music, that we could always do together, no matter what was going on in the rest of our relationship. Um and those were wonderful things and wonderful pieces of our relationship, but there was a lot of friction between the two of us.

Yeah. That's hard, isn't it? Because you're it is hard. Taking care you're you you've stepped into the role uh as the primary caregiver from what I you know what you've spoken about. Um and oh god, I can't even begin to imagine you're trying to care take care of your yourself and your own needs and the disintegration of your relationship with your mum because of the you know the because of Alzheimer's. Yeah, that's that would would have been uh really challenging, I'm sure.

Watching her lose little pieces of herself, like for example, when she was in memory care, they allowed them, they they allowed the residents to use um paints, but like primary school paints. Um and my mother had been a um really kind of accomplished watercolor artist, but they wouldn't allow watercolors there. And I thought long and hard about pushing that issue with the facility so that she could do watercolors, at least when I came to visit her. And then I decided not to because I was afraid that I would bring them and she wouldn't know what to do with them, and it would be one more piece of her that was gone, and I didn't want to face that. She while she was dealing with the beginnings of Alzheimer's, she had her second bout with breast cancer. Oh she was unable to take care of one of her wounds from surgery. It was the one that was on the back where they had taken some skin so that she would have what she needed for um, you know, replacement basically afterwards. And um her husband couldn't care for it. He couldn't slash wouldn't, I I don't know. Um he said he just couldn't face it. So she was home from the hospital a few days and she was not getting better and she seemed like she had less energy and so on. And I ended up kidnapping her, like not seriously, but um I once again my husband stepped in. I said, I really want to bring her here because I can take care of her here so easily while I take care of the kids at the same time. And he said, Then go get her. And I said, She'll never let me come get her. And he said, just go get her. And the following morning I called her and said, Hey, how you doing? And she really wasn't doing all that well, and she sounded very weak. And I said, I'm gonna come get you. And she said, Okay. And I that was not my mom. That was absolutely not my mom. Um, yeah. And then silly little pieces like um she sang in the church choir uh with me and with her granddaughters, which was a lovely thing to be able to do, three generations of us doing that. Um, and she made her fellow altos crazy. Um, the girls and I were sopranos, so we were kind of across the way. Her. Um, but she would sing with her, she would, she would make the autos crazy, and she would never know what piece they were on, and her music would be upside down and all of that. But her last Sunday at church before she went into memory care, she sang, and she sang with her music upside down, and she sang correctly because it was something that she knew from the time she was a little girl. So the relationship things were m I guess messy, like everybody's relationships are messy, they were messy like probably everyone else's, but there were these lovely twinkling stars of nice things that happened. We could always talk about gardening, also. And my last conversation was about gardening and bees.

Oh, where was I gonna go next? Um, thank you for sharing that. Sorry, just take a pause and look at my questions. I guess oh yeah. Kind of following on from that, how did your relationship change? When your mum did go into um memory care, did did you feel like there was a shift in how you felt about your mum? Um, or you know, did it change?

Not about how I felt about her, but I did there was a lot of relief about her being safe.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. You would have been on hypervigilance for the whole time that she was deteriorating and not getting any help.

Yes, and it I it it ended up that even when she was in memory care, um that they still called me in the middle, I you know, she would call me in the middle of the night, or her husband would call me and say, I don't know what to do with her, or whatever. And they would still call me from memory care to do that. She went from a kind of um, I guess what's now a pretty traditional memory care with a mazey sort of um internal setup so that they they always sort of end up back in the same place. It's you know, the residents always sort of end up in um back in the same place and they can't get lost and they can't get out, and there's gardens to go out into and and um all of that.

And I forgot where I was going with that, but um I was just asked you about the while I just sort of mentioned you would be like hyper-vigilant when before she went in.

She would still call me because she frustrated them. She wouldn't sit and watch TV, she was always agitated, she wanted to chat up the nurses, and the nurses didn't want to chat her up. They, you know, wanted to do whatever it is that they needed to do, and she was expected to be kind of independent. Um, and she wasn't able to do that. And at one point she got angry, way too angry. She went out into the gardens in the morning, and it the the thing about it was is I had done exactly the same thing the same morning. It was December 22nd, we had a light snowfall, which is summertime for you, right? Yes, right. Bang in the middle. So we had a beautiful light snowfall, and I went out onto my back deck at my house in my bare feet because I wanted to feel the snow and be I love snow, it's magic to me. And um, these are things that I used to do with my mom growing up. Or I'd I'd take her outside in the middle of the night, I'd come home from being out with friends or whatever, and I'd pull her out of bed and say, You have to see all the moonlight on the flowers, that kind of thing. So while I was doing that at home, she was doing exactly the same thing in memory care, and they were in a dither because she was in her pajamas and her bare feet. Um, and they tried to get her to come inside and she gave them a hard time. And so they shipped her across town to a uh Alzheimer's psych unit. And if you think an Alzheimer's unit is depressing, the Alzheimer's psych unit is something way beyond. So she ended up there, but in all honesty, they had more room for her behaviors there. They there was a nurse that she liked chatting up um in the middle of the night, and she was happy to chat her up. I met her met her one day in the um in the elevator, and she said, Where was I going? And I told her where I was going, and she said, Oh. And I said, Oh, my mom's there. And she said, Who's your mom? And I told her, and she just couldn't, she waxed philosophical about how wonderful my mother was and all of that. And at that point, when she was in the psychiatric unit, they weren't interested in medicating her into submission. They just, which I felt like they wanted to do in the other place, and maybe they didn't. I don't, I, you know, I wasn't taking care of her 24-7. So I just don't know. And I knew how frustrating she could be. Um, but in this place they didn't, and they didn't care if she was up in the middle of the night soldiering around and talking to people or whatever, so long as she didn't uh disturb anyone's sleep, and she didn't at that point. So yeah, all of the little things.

Yeah.

Do you do you feel like she like being in that, even though like from the outside point of view, that that would sound like a better way to spend your last days, like at least you're not being suppressed and and confused by being told off and that sort of thing.

Um yeah, from an outsider's perspective, I'm sure it would not be a great way to to um it was much more of a traditional 1960s, 1970s sort of um setup. Uh but yes, I think in the end she was more comfortable in that situation because people just people just let her be who she was.

Yeah. How long ago did you say it was? Was it like early 90s?

Oh no. No, the arts, the late arts. Oh, okay. Just before 2010.

Turning Night Stories Into A Memoir

Okay. And so how do how much do you think that kind of the the whole process that someone goes through from diagnosis? I mean, you said you've got a very late diagnosis for your mum. But the process that people go through now, are you do you know anything about that compared to what you had to go through? And also the the caretaking? Like, has that changed? I certainly have heard from friends of mine that there are similarities in the challenges that they've faced with their parents where there's been resistance to wanting to get help, even home help. Um but has the general sort of process and the caretaking process changed? Is there more advice or more sort of a direction that you can go in rather than just winging it?

I think there's more information out there. Yeah. I think a lot more people are being diagnosed with mild cognitive dementia, MCD, and they're getting medications earlier on for that, and a little bit more understanding for their families. I still think the complexities and as the d disease progresses, there are a lot of the same frustrations and and so on. And again, it's still an amateur business. You're going through it with a parent, and you've probably not been through it before, even to witness with a grandparent. It's not, it doesn't give you all the information that you need. Um, it's an insidious disease. Yeah, it it takes away bits and pieces of you, and you sort of fall away and leave this shell, and it's it's really hard on the people around you. Um I'm reasonably sure that my great-grandfather also had Alzheimer's just from my grandmother and my mother's descriptions of his behavior as he got older. My mother used to try in her young life over summers when she was free from school, um, he lived with them, and my grandmother would put my mother in charge of keeping him from wandering. Um, and she would try and um glue his shoes to the floor so that they wouldn't take off on her. So um I it's likely that my mother was the third generation of this, and I'm I'm hoping that this is not what I have to look forward to, but my family is, I think, a little bit better informed.

Yes. And it sounds like you're very well informed as well. Would that change your does that change your perspective? Having gone through that with your mum, does that change your perspective on um the processes that you would go through?

It's hard to say, isn't it? If I had it to do over again, there are things that I would do differently. They would probably still be just as difficult. But just like the key thing, I think I my husband was the one who had the you know, the light bulb go on about that. Yeah. I think both or one of us might have had that earlier, yeah. Um, and then not have struggled through those kinds of things. So yeah, and the book, the book is really a book about death and dying. I mean, yeah. And the it chronicles the last nine months of her life, that time period when she was in memory care. Um, with flashbacks. So the beginning of each chapter is about what's happening in memory care, and the second half of the third half of the third part of the chat of the chapter is flashbacks to her better days and to my growing up and to my children growing up. And then in between each is a poem. Okay. And I kind of think of the first and third parts as being black and white, and the um the poems in the middle being real um colorful snapshots of what's going on, and you can kind of say so much more, I think, in poetry than you can in prose. So um that's there. And I also think of the book as a patchwork quilt, not a crazy quilt where you have you just throw everything in there and you're using your scraps kind of thing, but something with a theme and and color and stuff that goes together. So it has a boundary on it, and that boundary is those nine months, but there's the flashbacks and everything. So if you were to take each section of the quilt out, it would each each section could stand on its own. And that's kind of what it's like. It's it's definitely you could if you're the kind of person that likes to read only for short periods of time, you can read it and put it down and then come back. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

When did you decide to write? Did you start journaling during that time?

No, I have always sort of journaled minimally. Yeah. Later in life, I've done a lot of journaling and drawing. Um, but no, I did not journal about my mother, and I had absolutely no intention of writing a book. And then we moved from the east coast of the United States to San Diego. Um, so kind of a diagonal almost as far as we could have gone. Yep. And um one of the things I wanted to do when I got here was maybe get connected with some people who were doing poetry and stuff because I like writing poetry. Um and I kind of dragged my feet on it. I didn't really do anything about it. I was meeting people at work and and stuff like that. So I, you know, I didn't feel desperate to make connections because I had some already. Um, but I kept getting awakened in the middle of the night by these stories about my mother. And I used to describe it to my husband. I said, I feel like she's in inside my head, knocking on my on my skull to get out. Um, and I I I I wake up with these ideas and I can't go back to sleep, and I just keep mulling them and mulling them over in my head. And he got me a glass cover to go on my night table and handed me a Sharpie and said, When you wake up in the middle of the night, write down what you're thinking about, and maybe you'll be able to go back to sleep. And in fact, I was able to do that, but I had bits and pieces of things that I could write about. And then I ended up signing up for a class at San Diego Writers Inc. and met awesome people there. And we had assignments every week, five pages to bring into class to read and have critique gone on, and so on. And at one point I realized I had a volume of information. It was all really about my mother and her time in memory care. And I laid it all out on my living room floor five pages at a time, and said, Oh my God, I have a book. And that's when I started adding the poems, some of which were already written, and the uh stories of the now about, you know, the flashbacks um and putting them in the second half.

Was the um the story writing and those those sort of stories that were coming to you in the night, were they from your perspective, your experience? Or Yes. Yeah. And your relationship with your mum at the time, how you felt about what was going on, or was it much more sort of factual processes?

It a lot of it was my frustration with the process of getting her into memory care, what happened when she was in memory care, their willingness to accept her for who she was, her ability to have coffee. My mother never drank anything besides coffee and Manhattan's honest What's a Manhattan? Is it a coffee drink with whiskey and coffee? No, no coffee, no coffee, and whiskey and bitters, and I don't remember what it was. Um and uh they they wouldn't let the residents drink coffee for what might be obvious reasons, the caffeine and so on and so forth. But my mother loved coffee and she wasn't allowed to have it, and I would sneak it into her, or friends would sneak it into her so that she could have it. She'd be so grateful. My coffee. Oh my coffee. So yeah.

So okay, so the yeah, there was a frustration with the the system and the experience that you you had to go through to try and get your mom into care.

Yes, and I originally I thought it was going to be a six after her they interview all their residents to see if they're gonna fit and if they'll fit with the program and everything. And she had an interview and they told me it would be a good six to eight weeks wait. It could be as many as ten. And I I was ready for that. And they called me the day after her interview and said, uh, we'd like to move up. Oh, we need to talk to you about memory care. And I was like, oh no, they're gonna tell me she can't go. And instead, they said, We'd like to move up her placement, we'd like her to take her the week after next. Um, we're concerned um for her safety. And they said that she when they had interviewed her, her husband was there and he talked with his hands, and every time he raised his hands, she oh shuddered and pulled back. And I I don't know whether that was because he was hurting her or whether she was startled. I just don't know.

Oh, that sounds terrible. Okay. I would love to know about um so you went to the you went to the writers group and you were writing your story, well, you you were writing your stories your five pages a week and you realized that you had a book. While you were going through that process, was there an element of like cath is it catharsis?

Uh yes, I was gonna say you were hesitating on your word, and I was gonna say absolutely, absolutely catharsis. And then it became an oh my gosh, this is an amateur business, and other people were going through this, and I know other people are going through this, and if I get this out there, other people will know that they're not alone. And one of the main reasons that I ended up publishing was so that other people would know that they're not alone and to kind of immortalize my mother, um, but that's a whole nother story. Um and to know that to to maybe have some comfort in that we make the best decisions that we can with the information that we have at the time, same as raising children in that amateur way that we do both those things. And if the book can provide people comfort around that, I that makes me very, very happy.

Creativity As Grief Work

I think it's um, yeah, it you've got this um amazing story, your own personal story of what you went through and the fact that you've used writing as a tool to sort of uh well to get the story out, that experience, but also as a as a way of resolving, resolving, I don't know if it's the right word, um processing your grief. Absolutely. And and I wonder if you could talk a little to that. Um you've had a bit more experience now, and you've um are you writing more poetry? Is that becoming a bit more of a um form of expression? Like personal self-expression. Um because I think that that, you know, I've heard uh on numerous occasions that art and creativity does have that effect on us. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit to that. Just as like or you know, creativity as a source of um healing.

So I'm I'm pretty creative. My mom was very creative and very accomplished as far as her creativity was concerned. And I am also creative. My dad was that way too, and so I had their examples and so on. But I think I rode the um inspiration wave more than either of them did. They sort of put their noses to the grindstone, and when inspiration came, it did, but they were still working in between. I'm definitely a do-it on the inspiration or assignment kind of person. Um so when she was knocking on my cranium to, you know, to get out, um I I don't think I saw it really so much as creativity as it was just like you said, catharsis. And then having the assignments and writing it, I would, it was that black and white thing again. The prose was very black and white, and other people would listen to me read it in class and they would tear up. And I wouldn't have teared up about it, but when I wrote the poetry, I did. So I just see it as far more colorful. Um, but now I've been asked to read bits and pieces of the book, and I've also been asked a lot of the questions that you're asking here in the podcast, and I tear up when I'm talking about it. So it definitely allowed me, when I was going through this, I put one foot in front of the other and made the decisions that I needed to make, trying my very best to do what was right by my mom to keep her safe and to protect her dignity. And I didn't think I if I had thought about really what was happening to her and how she was melting away, I would have been so wrecked that I would have been useless. So I didn't allow myself any of that until all of it was said and done. And really it was the writing that pushed its way out and you know, through through creativity and through the inspirations and yeah.

Have you did you have any skills to help you balance the emotional weight of the story?

Um and you know, as you were recollecting things, did you how did you I had my husband's shoulder and my bestie's shoulder? And my bestie, my husband obviously knew my mom from before we were married, but not much before we were married. My bestie knew my mom from the time we were both six. Oh wow. Um she's the closest I have to a to a sibling, and actually. Her sins referred to me as the other sister. Um, so it was really nice that not only did she have perspective on my mom and my relationship with my mom, but she knew my grandmother too. Oh. And so she knew the repetition of some of these events and failings and so on. So I have them and I talk to them a lot about all of that. And then um I'm an amateur musician and have been since I was a very little girl. And um I think that's always how I've felt my feelings through music. So yeah. Beautiful.

When you realized that you had enough material for a book, um what kind of spurred you on to do it? To get, I mean, you've mentioned that you want to help other people, but it's a quite a big undertaking, isn't it? Publishing a book and like getting it out.

Well, I had done it with all without thinking about it. Wow. Because I had I had done stuff for the class and then realized that there were things that I wanted to add to it and that those would be fun and um would augment the story and so on. And so it the motivating thing really became helping other. I I'm not interested in making millions on this or anything else. If if I help a couple of people just get through this and understand that it's difficult and other people have been, I I did, I did leave it in a drawer, metaphorically, because I left it on my hard drive. But um I I left it in a drawer for a few years, didn't do anything with it. I thought it was insipid dribble and that no one was gonna want to read it. And um, my first editor who was part of that class said to me, What's going on with your book? You did all this work, you you did all this stuff, what's going on? And she was the one who really pushed me to do something with it, Tracy Jean Jones. Um, so yeah.

If you were to describe the book, how would you describe it? If if we, you know, if we had someone who has a parent um with dementia, how would you describe it to them? Is it a toolkit?

Is it um I I would say it's a navigation of the system around Alzheimer's or the system as it was then, and a navigation of of the ravages of the disease in someone that we love, an acknowledgement that love isn't perfect, but it's kind of perfect for us.

Yeah.

That's like you know, my mother wasn't perfect, our love wasn't perfect, but it worked for us. And that was, I mean, there were times I wasn't able to say that and didn't feel that, but you know, it's there.

I'm through I'm just like hard firing questions at you. I've got another one. Um did you did you feel that writing the book was all you needed to help you grieve, or did you go through a process of any kind of counseling or anything afterwards?

Do you feel like this has been a I didn't go through counseling afterwards, I did go through counseling during at the very beginning. Yeah. I I went um to counseling. And um yes, but I'm still grieving. I I mean I think grief is something that we carry with us. Oh, who is it? Kugler Ross, either Kugler Ross or um the one that everybody talks about. Oh my god, I can't think of her. Um I'll think of it and I'll email it to you, but um uh said something along the lines of that uh grief is love that we have no place to put. Um, and I just said to my husband today, and it's been years since this has happened, something happened, and I wanted to mention it to my mother, and you have that fleeting thought, oh, I'll give my mother a call, and then that crashing realization that she's not there to call. Oh, and I don't think we ever get over that. Um, you know, it's this is the situation that's gonna end badly for whoever is going through it, it's gonna end in death.

Yeah.

Um, and it's gonna be hard, but you have the power to get through, and you do, and you mourn, and you I think mourning changes as you as you go older from the event. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're not gonna give too much away, are we, with the title of your book. Your title is called Who Will Name the Bees? And um, are you allowed to say anything about that?

Book Details Advice And How To Help

Or well, I am allowed to say it. And I one of the things I'll say is that a lot of times I read books and I have no idea where someone picked the title for it. This will be very obvious, and it's toward the the end of the book. And suffice it to say that my mother thought it was really cool that we kept bees.

Okay.

She was a gardener and she thought that that was a um pretty cool thing.

So yeah, bees are pretty cool.

They are pretty cool.

Um as we come to the close of our conversation, is there anything that you would like to add? Oh, we've you can tell us your website. Oh, sure. We're gonna put you we're actually gonna put you in the um in our guest directory as well. So yeah.

Okay. So it's Sarah Vasberg, all one word.com. Yep. And um, I'm in the process of proofing the audiobook, which is a lot of fun because I read um the parts that were happening in the present in memory care. My younger daughter read all the poetry in the middle, and my older daughter read The Younger Me. Oh. How cool. Um, so that was a lot of fun. Yeah, um, I'm I'm available for book clubs if people are interested. Okay. Um, the book in the ebook will be available on Amazon and at local bookstores as of April 22nd. Right. And the audiobook is exclusively on Audible. Yep. Um, congratulations. I'm gonna go on a tour, a US tour, gonna do eight cities. That should be fun. Looking forward to yeah, meeting people that are interested.

Yeah. And any pieces of advice for other people that might be going through a similar process to the one that you went through.

Trust yourself and know that you were doing the very best that you can. Um, stay strong, contact me on my website. I'm happy to chat, um, to email you or whatever. And in the end the love will be there. As hard as it may be to go through it.

Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. Um, it's been really insightful conversation, and I wish you the best of luck with the release of your book.

Thank you so much. You've been a gracious host, and I am honored uh by your giving me the time and by your listeners giving me the time. I thank you for that. It's been a privilege.

Thank you. Hey there, Rebel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Midlife Rebel Podcast. If you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to Buy MeACoffee forward slash Midlife Rebel Podcast. Thanks for listening.