The grief, guilt and joy of being a caregiver for my mom

I was my mother’s primary caregiver in the final three years of her life, as she struggled with dementia and the physical and emotional tortures that visit the afflicted.

If I am to be honest, I did it out of a sense of duty but not always joy or love.

I spent three or four days a week with her, including every weekend, not because anyone told me I needed to, but because I was the woman she had raised: the good Irish Catholic daughter of immigrants who never stopped craving her mother’s approval and affection. But during those three years, there were times when I would have sold my soul to not visit her, struggle with the wheelchair as we went for a drive, cajole her to eat and talk (endlessly) about the weather.