Guest post from Shelly Calcagno for Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care Education Week
I felt something on the corner of her quilt the other night as I sat writing in my room. I looked down, and there was her name.
Ironed on so tight.
I remembered when she first went into long-term care—ten years after her Alzheimer’s journey had begun—and I was struggling and resentful. I didn’t want her there and was upset that all her beautiful belongings were labeled with such impersonal tags, tossed into big piles with the items of strangers she didn’t even know.
Swirling together in washing machines, all coming together in their unlikely, mismatched loads.
I almost cried out, “Don’t touch my mom’s things,” because I wanted more for her life than labeled laundry in some back room as her memories slipped farther and farther away.
But that was her home, and so I had to let go.
Later, I learned to love that sacred place—those walls holding beautiful lives and stories, many often forgotten. I would come and go, and my tender heart would break and be full all at once.
Some days, I think about going back and walking the halls to remember those cherished moments and fully process those final hours of our longest goodbye, forever seared into my heart.
But I don’t think I can be there if she’s not.
So, I pull her quilt up around me, and now I’m glad for that little tag in the corner. I’ll never take it off. And I think about my kids and all the sweet grandbabies, and how one day their little fingers will touch the corner of the quilt, and they will ask about the name, and her story will be told again.
I gently open my bedside table and see her worn-out Bible, with her notes scrawled in all the corners of the pages. That precious book of God holds her memories, too. Then, I’ll pull out her favorite mug—the one she always saved for me—and sit and think of those days on a cozy Saturday morning, resting in those precious moments I’ve gathered.
And maybe we’re all just a group of heart-worn people grasping onto those precious belongings that bring us joy in loss—wearing the clothes with faded tags, gently turning the see-through pages of books with love notes written in familiar script, and sipping our drinks in comfort-filled cups.
That’s how we go on.
That’s how we reflect.
That’s how love goes on.
I’ll remember the moments and tell the stories.
Her story—and mine.
Shelly Calcagno’s longest goodbye began when her mother forgot the word for dandelions and referred to them as “yellow flowers” instead. That moment started a journey that Calcagno never wanted to be on. In her memoir, The Longest Goodbye: A Family’s Hope-Filled Journey Through Alzheimer’s, Calcagno shares her own personal journey with her mother in hopes of helping herself—and others like her—say the longest goodbye.
Calcagno is open and raw as she shares each step of her journey so far—from her mother’s forgetting “dandelions” to the day her mother could no longer recognize her. She even shares brief glimpses of what life has been like for her father, who was the main caregiver until the family made the difficult decision of putting her mother in an assisted living facility.
In writing about her own loss, Calcagno hopes to help herself heal and to walk with others who are starting their own longest goodbyes. With each chapter, Calcagno shares another step of her own heartache and reflects on ways that people and circumstances helped her along the way.
Learn more about Shelly Calcagno and The Longest Goodbye HERE.