It is amazing how small our worlds can shrink when we are ill—physically, emotionally, even intellectually.

Sometimes, standing still is a good thing. Mom seems to be in a holding pattern in her new Alzheimer’s ward. She exhibits a wide range of emotions, talks a mile a minute to anyone who will listen (even when they don’t understand her), and generally participates in group activities. Plus, she has her music to keep her company. I can’t ask for more. We are resting on a small plateau, knowing there will be more—sometimes rapid—downturns in Mom’s mind and body, and we are enjoyin

Eight months of taking my mom to synagogue with me each Shabbat ended as abruptly as it started. It was this thought that struck me so powerfully as I stood in shul on Yom Kippur without her. Had I somehow failed her? My parents had moved from Netanya to Beer Sheva in September 2017. It was a move motivated by Mom’s Alzheimer’s. If they were closer to me, I could help out more, be a 2nd pair of hands, allow my dad respite on the caregiver’s day off. Within a week of the move,

“These stairs are getting slower and slower,” Mom comments as we walk down the three flights to the street. I laugh at her expressive way of telling me she's moving slowly. I am like an anthropologist discovering the true meaning of her words. When we walk past a kitchen wares store, Mom says, “I remember the first time we went to look for frying pans together.” I decide she's telling me that she enjoys my company. Mom is using her words to suggest that she has a connection t

Two weeks since I last wrote and my mom is still ill. She has a urinary tract infection that won't go away. She's been on three types of antibiotics and because pills have now become difficult for her to swallow, we're dissolving them in cranberry juice. While I was away, my brother Simon arrived from California for 10 days to help out. And this weekend, they all came to visit me—Simon, Mom and Daddy, along with my oldest and his wife, plus the two kids who still live at home

How naïve I was to think I could weather this devastation that is Alzheimer’s and maintain my wits. Mom is disintegrating before my very eyes. She is a changed individual. I fear that she will never revert to who she was before her fever two weeks ago. It is the compassion of the rain pouring from the skies that hides my tears. Today, as follow-up to her doctor’s visit last week, I took Mom for a chest x-ray and blood tests. The doctor could find nothing physically wrong with

Mom is running a fever and has a cold. Pretty common in winter. In fact, I’m nursing a bad cold, too. It seems that not even the flu shots she got could have prevented this. If Mom were a healthy person, getting over a virus would be relatively easy, but she isn’t a healthy person. She can’t seem to recognize what’s happening to her body, let alone request help. She lay awake in bed one night shivering and shaking, and it was only by chance that my dad woke up to find her suf