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This is for the Journaling Challenge, the Use Your Scraps Challenge, the Show Me Your Stitching Challenge, the Very Laid Back Challenge and the More Than One Challenge. In the Journaling Challenge we had to journal the emotion "Sad". Stitching is penned around some of the papers, and I used at least 85% of some of the ugliest scraps over a year old for the scrap challenge.

The Journaling is on the back of the layout. It reads:
"Soon after moving to Columbia SC my father was diagnosed with Alzheimers Disease and Multi-Infarct Dementia. He and Mom had bought a condo after arriving in Columbia and were settling in nicely. My sister and I had noticed that Dad was being to act a little strangely, and my brother from Goldsboro came down to see if he agreed. Ironically, he said Mom was actually worse than Dad!

We decided to let them live as they in their condo as long as we could, but just to keep an eye on them. Unfortunately when my dad began having more and more episodes, Mom was the one he took it out on! She would call me crying and saying he was getting worse. Then he began seeing things that weren’t there. It was so hard seeing him deteriorate from the handsome, sharp man he had been, but it got to the point where we had to consider hospitalization. There, the doctors confirmed after many tests that Dad had a combination of Alzheimer’s and mini-strokes. We were heart broken! He had to stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks for evaluation, and in the meantime the family decided that I would quit working and take care of them in my home.

With both of them in the house with me, we settled into a new routine. Dad had always been “head of the house”, and to keep the peace, we left him with that illusion. It finally got to the point though that we had to put Dad into a nursing home, where he died about six months later.

By that time, Mom was showing the same symptoms that Dad had shown. Because of her bad knees she no longer could go up the stairs to the bedrooms (which were all upstairs), so it was decided that Mom and I should move up to my brother’s house, which was all on one level. Selling my house was so hard because in the short time I had lived there I had grown to love it. But I did, and we caravanned up to Goldsboro, and moved in bag and baggage with my brother and sister-in-law. I know it was hard on them, but I was so grateful to have the support. Mom slowly declined, and died about 2 and a half years later.

To see the most wonderful parents in the world turn into empty shells before they died was so traumatic! To this day I think of them and how I could have done a better job of taking care of them. I think of the times I was short with Mom because I was so overwhelmed. I think of the times she was so scared of what was happening to her and I would hold her in my arms and soothe her. When she began to think that I was Dad, and she couldn’t tell whether it was day or night, I knew we were going to go through it all again. Suicide was an option I thought about often, but whenever I wanted to get up in the night and get a knife from the kitchen, I couldn’t get out of the bed! It was like a giant hand was holding me down so hard I couldn’t get up! A few years later, thinking about it, I realized that the Lord was holding me down in that bed!! He wouldn’t let me get up!! PTL!

Alzheimers is such an awful disease! I obsess that I’m going to go through the same thing eventually. However now I have found such a good doctor and he has helped me deal with some lingering issues so that maybe, finally, I can begin to move on!"

Thanks for Looking!


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