The picture of Dad and me at the cemetery 10 months after her death and on her birthday.
My mother died a little after midnight on July 23, 2024, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. If you have ever had a front-row seat to someone’s suffering, you know how devastating this illness is. It not only slowly robs a person of their memory, but it eventually takes away their ability to walk, talk, swallow, and regulate both emotions and pain.
We first became aware that something was wrong when our very active and independent mother started forgetting where she parked her car while out shopping. Soon, she began getting lost while driving, ending up in places from which she could not navigate home. A cognitive test at her primary doctor’s office led to an MRI of her brain, a neurologist visit, and the ultimate loss of her driver’s license. She was absolutely devastated when the state revoked her license as a result of that test. Having her wings clipped only increased the anger within an already shrinking brain, and she began to experience severe mood swings.
As the disease progressed, Mom started having difficulty walking, shifting into a heavy side-to-side shuffle. She experienced vivid hallucinations in the middle of the night and would often pace the floors until dawn. One night, she even locked herself in the neighbor’s garage. Dad was losing sleep and becoming profoundly exhausted. My siblings and I took turns helping out during the day, and we hired an agency to provide home care, but it simply did not work out. When our dad became ill himself, we knew we had to do something to keep Mom safe and Dad well. We looked into assisted living facilities that offered memory care, eventually settling on a beautiful place called Crescent Fields in Huntingdon Valley. Once we set up their apartment, Mom and Dad moved into Crescent together in April of 2024.
Fast forward to July 6th—the day I found Mom in her bed and could not wake her up. I summoned the staff, who called the doctor, and an ambulance was dispatched. Mom was taken to Holy Redeemer Hospital, where she remained asleep for the next three days. When she finally woke up, she could no longer walk or swallow. After working closely with a speech therapist, she was able to regain some ability to swallow, but despite physical therapy, she never walked again. She was confused, deeply fearful, and asked me over and over again if she was going to be alright. My mom knew something terrible was happening to her, but she did not know what it was.
Anytime she was touched, she screamed in pain. When the nursing staff came to change her, I sat by her side and attempted to soothe her. Many times, tears just ran down my face as I stood by her bed, because her screams came from a place deeply within her gut. It was heart-wrenching. When the scans came back indicating hydrocephalus, we knew we were in the final stage of the disease. Her care team discussed inserting a shunt, but the surgery was too dangerous for an 86-year-old, and a shunt would not reverse the progression of her Alzheimer’s.
Mom was deteriorating quickly, so hospice was called in to make her final days as comfortable as possible. On Friday, July 19th, Mom was moved over to St. Joseph’s Manor, which was connected to Holy Redeemer Hospital, and her hospice care began. That Saturday, all of her children and grandchildren came to visit. Mom was awake, alert, and truly enjoyed their company. Dad was a constant, loving presence by her side. By Sunday, she lost consciousness, and my siblings and I remained vigilantly at her bedside.
By Monday, we knew she was dying. Dad was utterly exhausted, so we took him home to rest. Michael left later in the evening, leaving Frankie, Marianne, and me to sit through the night. It was a little after midnight when my mom took her last breath. Frankie sat on one side of the bed, and I sat on the other with one hand on the railing and my other hand resting across her chest. Marianne had fallen asleep at the foot of the bed. I felt Mom take her final breath and raised my head from the railing to look at her. Frankie and I looked at each other, and then my mom’s heart stopped beneath my hand, followed by a loud exhale of air from her lungs. Our mother was gone.
We sat in the silence. A quiet peace filled the room. We called the nurse. Sometime later, Frankie went home, while Marianne and I remained with our mom until the funeral home arrived to take her. When we finally left the building in the early morning hours, it was raining. The drive home felt entirely surreal.
My mother had made her wishes well known to us long before she ever became sick. She had a very detailed plan laid out, right down to her funeral mass. She wanted her oldest grandsons—Shaun, Josh, Joe, Justin, Frankie, Danny, Artie, and Greg—to carry her, while the rest of her grandsons and great-grandsons walked directly behind the casket. Together, my parents had 10 grandsons and 7 great-grandsons. The granddaughters handled the readings, while Marianne and I delivered the Words of Remembrance. Mom had even picked out her own music and clothes. The service was beautiful, and Mom was laid to rest peacefully in the family plot, right next to my brother Artie and across from Uncle Gene,
My earliest recollection begins when I lived with my maternal grandparents at 3907 Ridge Avenue. They had a five bedroom, three story row house that sat directly across from Laurel Hill cemetery. I slept on the third in the front bedroom in a crib that overlooked the cemetery. I shared that room with my older brother Michael, who was two years older than I. When I was about two years, he decided to tease me, as was his nature. Michael was a mischief maker and enjoyed scaring me. I remember being in my crib while he told me a ghost was in our closet. I am not sure whether the wind or my brother shut the closet door, but I hid under my blanket and my brother—who scared himself—ran down the stairs.
