Between Here and Home: Last Lessons From My Mother

The Slow Unraveling of Grief

Losing my mother has been a slow and sacred unraveling of anticipatory grief.

My mom has Alzheimer’s.

In her younger years, she was a teacher. She is the strongest and sweetest woman I’ve ever known.

I mourn her while she is still alive.

Inside the Cave of Pain

Mom recently spent a week in the hospital amidst a “perfect” storm of challenges: Broken pelvis and ribs, two infections, bruises everywhere. Blood pressure up, potassium down. All at once. Cooped up in an unfamiliar setting with a succession of unfamiliar faces. And no way to use language to communicate her pain and her needs. Our family kept vigil in shifts, a bridge between her and the care she needed.

I held her hand at her bedside through the darkest of pain, in desperate fear and resolution. She gripped at my hand until my fingers turned purple. I talked her through each peak of excruciating anguish, reading her gestures, her face. Reminding her of her own strength. I sang to her softly, the songs she sang to me as a child.

You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.

Navigating the cave is easier with a hand to hold.

The waves of pain crashed against her body like labor. Breathe, Mom. This one will pass. You’re stronger than you think. You’ve got this.

The Moment the Veil Lifted

Somewhere in the witching hours in the darkened room of ER room 18, the delirium overtook her. She reached into the air, mumbling—mom, mom, mommy. Dad.

“Dad?” I asked. “You see your dad? What did he say?”

She opened her eyes and with complete clarity, without missing a beat, answered plainly: “Stay alive.”

And as quickly as that moment came, she was swallowed back into the fog. I’ve replayed that moment in my mind a hundred times since.

Last Lessons

“Stay alive,” he said.

Did your dad send you back for one last lesson?

To say you’re sorry?
That I am good?
That you’re proud of me?
To say thank you?

Whatever the reason, you stayed long enough to teach me one more lesson: how to dig deep. Truly deep.

To show me that resilience is beautiful.

And to teach me that strength—true strength—is not loud or performative.
It rises, drawn from the well within.
A strength I recognize in my own bones.
A strength that doesn’t roar, but roots.

A strength born of pain.

A pain you can hide from most of the world
But we lock eyes,
And we know.

Something long-buried softened between us. Old wounds, old fears—hers and mine. A truth carried in the body long after words were lost.

And we are sorry.
And we understand.
And we love.
Without a word, without a sound.

She fights the battle, yet I wear her scars.

Meeting in the Space Between

In those dark hours, when language failed her and I could barely breathe, something ancient passed between us. We spoke more clearly than we had in a decade. Not with words, but with breath, with touch, with subtle movements and gestures. It felt like we were meeting each other on both sides of the veil at once. Mother and daughter. Teacher and student. Child and caretaker.

And in her pain, I saw a strength I knew in my own body—the quiet, relentless resilience of women who endure. I saw the divine feminine not as some distant myth, but as something alive in her. In us. A power born in the womb, tempered in pain. The same power that once pushed my own children into the world, that carried me through labor and miles and heartbreak. She showed me where I came from.

I cry for her.
Not because it’s sad, but because it is beautiful.
She is beautiful.
And I am so grateful and proud to call her Mom.

We can’t live forever. We. ALL. Are going to die.

The Long Goodbye

Earlier in the progression of her disease, she had a sundowning phase. Every evening she would putter through the house picking up clothes, toiletries, random objects. It evoked images of Steve Martin in The Jerk. All I need is this lamp, this remote control, this mirror. We would distract, redirect, replace the things. Over and over.

She packed because she wanted to go home.

And she will.

It occurred to me that this life isn’t a finite story with a beginning and an end.

Just like an airport, departure precedes arrival.

One last lesson. She is teaching us how to be ready, when she’s ready to go home.

Carrying Her Home

Once she was released from the hospital and settled in at the rehabilitation facility where she is now knitting her bones and, God willing, relearning how to walk, I finally returned to my own home.

Depleted. Disoriented. Vacant.

I cast a glance of vague overwhelm at all that had overgrown in my absence. A discarded green glass soda bottle had rolled into the driveway. I picked it up on my way inside, but hesitated on tossing it into the recycle bin. Instead, I picked up my pruners and stepped back out into the garden.

Holding my mother in my heart, I cut what called to me. Without thought. I chose the petals the breeze sent to shimmering like a dream.

Snapdragon. Sage. Vervain. I realized I wasn’t arranging flowers. I was arranging her.

Protection. Wisdom. Love.

Mom.

Love,
Karin (with an eye)

P.S. If this resonated, you might also like my other pieces on caregiving and the Alzheimer’s journey:

The Minutes Before the Day: A Caregiver’s Meditation on Being Awake

The Gate: A Poem About Memory, Fractured Reality, and Altered Perception