The Long Good-bye

Friends, I write this as a window into my heart, something that I do not often do. So many of you have also experienced unimaginable grief, especially in these times of COVID and I want you to know that you are not alone. I have needed to take time off, to come to terms with my loss, and to grieve with my family. It is ok to rest. This time has also served as a reminder to me of why I do the things that I do. Why I continue to be an advocate for working families and for the things that I believe in--I am my mother’s daughter after all.

“Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be.”
Joan Didion
 

My mother was a traditional woman in many ways and yet decades ahead of her time. It mattered to her that my siblings and I were well mannered, well dressed and well behaved. It mattered to her that we take our education seriously, and it mattered to her that we believed that we could become anything that we wanted despite the struggles that life would bring our way. We were a humble family tied to the copper mines in Arizona, but my mother determined a better life for us all.

My mother was a caregiver. She left her small copper mining community in the mountains and went to school to become a registered nurse. When my father deployed overseas, my mother returned home to work in the local hospital to take care of family and friends. She later volunteered with the American Red Cross for 25 years administering vaccines. Some of my most profound childhood memories are of relatives calling her in the middle of the night for advice. She was able to triage the situation, often saving my family hours in the emergency room and hundreds of dollars in medical expenses that they could not afford. I credit these memories with laying the foundation for who I would become in my own life. The idea that I could use my knowledge and abilities to help others was one planted in me by her, although I doubt she ever knew it.

For my mother, a healer, to be stricken with Alzheimer’s disease seemed to me like a cruel twist of fate. It is an awful disease, and one that challenged my faith in God. For years, I sat by my mother’s bedside watching a vibrant, intelligent and loving woman become a shell of her former self. I longed to have a conversation with her, to laugh, to solicit her sage advice but came up short each time. I tried desperately to find a meaning behind her suffering; a reason that this was happening. Surely, there was a lesson to learn. I learned that caring for the woman who cared for countless others including me was a privilege and reasoned that although her mind was somewhere else at least her body was still here. The truth is, loving and losing someone with Alzheimer’s disease is like saying a really long good-bye.

My mother weighed 80 lbs. in October of last year. By January, we received the dreaded call that it was time to let her go. She went eight whole days without being able to eat or drink, and with our blessings, she finally passed on. Her sister, my aunt Nellie, preceded her in death just days before, and we all knew that somehow, they needed a way to be together, and had found it. I now have a mom-shaped hole in my heart. Who will ever understand me as my mother did? I do not know how my grief will take shape in the days, months and years to come, but I do know that time will offer no healing but will merely shift my perspective.

While Alzheimer’s disease may have caused me to grieve for her twice, I am a better, stronger person for having known both versions of her. I love you, mom.

Sincerely, 

Senator Anna Caballero
State Senator, 12^th Senate District