Photo: André Lachaine
Today, for the first time in a long time, I was able to do my groceries without feeling an empty pit in the bottom of my stomach. For years, it seems, T used to do our groceries, and once a week, I would go to the nearest Metro and go up and down the aisles with a heavy heart, hoping to buy food my mother would like and eat. After that, I would go to her home where she lived by herself. Her Alzheimer's disease had made her a very messy person, hard to please, and not very pleasant to be with.
I would proceed to start a load of dirty clothes in the washing machine, then clean up the mess in the kitchen, empty the dishwasher and fill it up again. Then I would vacuum, shake her runners outside, put the trash by the road for the next day's pick-up. I would also change the sheets in her bed.
As far as I could tell, she often changed her clothes, but did not wash any. She did keep the litter boxes clean, and made sure her cats where well fed. Too much, even. The female was too fat, and later when I brought her in my home, she would be put on a very strict diet. Those where hard times for me, and for her, because she was just aware sometimes that something was very wrong with her.
For years, going to the grocery store brought back all those bad memories of my mother, and I would cringe inside, remembering the bad part of my mother's life. But today, I was surprised to realize that I was finally over this association. At last.
In a few days, on January 24, my mother will have been dead 5 years. It seems like forever. And it feels like yesterday.
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