Michele Dené Bulkley
I promised my widowed mom when I was young that I would never allow her to go to a nursing home when she became too frail to live independently. Her mother had died in a care center and was miserable there. Mom was always independent and suspected she would live out her life in the home I grew up in. But Mom started becoming forgetful at 86 years old. She left food cooking on the stove three times, and when her pressure cooker full of tomatoes exploded, it was time for me to sell my house and come home. This would begin an odyssey of increasingly intense caregiving that would last for seventeen years, until her death on September 10, 2019, two weeks shy of her 103rd birthday. I was 68.
I was a career social worker for thirty-five years, and I spent a good part of my career helping seniors remain independent by coordinating in-home services. But I had to quit my career so I could become her constant companion and ensure her 24/7 safety and well-being. I was single with no children, so it was clear I would assume this responsibility instead of my older sister. My father died when I was a little girl, and because my parents were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple, I felt I had an eternal mandate to care for my father’s sweetheart and my eternal mother. Little did I know how this sacred trust would keep me going over the years. I could never give up!
For the first two years after I moved home, my mother was still able to do quite a bit independently—crochet, read books, help with chores, and remember a lot of her life and mine. But when she was 88, mom needed a total neck fusion. She went into surgery my brilliant mom and came out eight hours later a confused, scared, and very forgetful woman with brain damage. She had dementia in all of its glory. We were all devastated and shocked.
She began grieving who she used to be and trying to accept and cope with the new Della. She couldn’t coordinate her hands to crochet, nor could she read a book and comprehend its meaning. Her judgment was gone. If she tried to make herself something to eat, the entire refrigerator contents came out. Everything became difficult for her to do, and I had to rethink how we lived. We installed keyed locks on the doors so she couldn’t get outside in the night. I had to put safety locks on the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator. She felt both sadness and shame about this, so I made a point to compliment her regularly. To help mom cope and feel safer, we lived a pretty rigid schedule every day. This was hard for me at first, but it actually became easy as the years passed.
We used to go to the stores so she could have variety in seeing things, touching things, and of course, buying things! Then as time passed we moved on to rides, drive-through eating for treats, then just trips around the block during her last year of life. Mom knew I had a bad back and that lifting her was extremely difficult and painful, so I reminded her to walk around our home every day. She and her cane did a long walk every day through the living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms–our home is only 900 square feet on the main floor. Up until the day before she went into the hospital and passed, she was walking—at nearly 103! She was courageous.
One of my rules with Mom was that we would only allow visitors who treated her with dignity and respect. Coy Clawson was assigned early on as our ministering brother, and Mom came to love him as the son she never had. Coy truly understands this role the Savior has given him. He made Mom laugh and he treated her as the respectable daughter of God she was. He had conversations with her that were stimulating to her, and she always brightened up when he frequently came to visit. He gave us blessings from time to time, which gave us both strength and hope. Ministering sisters brought us food, cards, and holiday gifts, along with cheerful and insightful conversations, which were always appreciated. I will deeply love these members forever!
Throughout the years I cared for Mom, I spoke to Heavenly Father countless times each day. And He blessed me with the divine guidance and strength to go on. There were divine interventions throughout these seventeen years. Mom was a returned missionary and had a strong testimony to her last breath. Despite her dementia, we talked about the gospel, the Spirit World, what our mortal journey was about, what our family in the Spirit World must be doing, and it gave us both hope and peace. I told her repeatedly the last months what to expect when her time to go home came. I had battled cancer years earlier, and I had been blessed with sight into the Spirit World, so I reminded her over and over of the brilliance of the glory, joy, and peace she would feel when my father would come to take her home. By the time Mom passed, the dementia had taken her memories of everyone she had loved in mortality. But Heavenly Father knows us intimately and gives us what we need when we need it. We’re never alone because we have His love.
Caregiving was sometimes difficult, but giving up was not an option. So when Mom was clear minded, I told her, “Mom, I am hurting. I am sad you are leaving me. I love you.” She would always put her arms out and hold me. When she apologized for getting so old, we would both cry. We knew as an eternal family that hurting was part of the great loving and eternal journey. We were best friends.
I have regrets and sometimes feel that I didn’t do things perfectly. I have to remind myself there was only one person who walked the Earth and did it perfectly. I know my mom forgives me.
I thought I loved my mom more than I ever could when I moved home to care for her. But during the last weeks of her life, I felt a love I had never imagined was possible. I would do anything for her to be happy. I literally gave up any life of my own, but it didn’t matter to me—she was all I cared about. I believe this is what Christlike love is. I had become a like a parent, and I understood the incredible love she had had for me all of my life. It was all worth everything we had gone through. She knew I had kept my promise to her and had loved her unconditionally. And she knew our journey would continue throughout eternity, with a little vacation until I join her.