A turning point, most likely

I think this is a turning point. In recent visits, she has not been as fearful as she was for those ten days, nor as smiley as she was that one day. But she's been different. It's made me look back on the other turning points.

July, 2005. I came home to find her curled up in the bed, saying she had lost control of the checkbook and didn't know how to get it back. We were overdrawn by $10,000. I knew something was seriously wrong.

February, 2007. She drove herself to her weekly psychiatrist's appointment, which was five minutes away -- two stop lights, one turn. She missed the turn and kept driving south for 30 minutes before calling me. I guided her back home by having her call out street signs as she passed them. I knew she could no longer drive herself even to places that were routine to her.

April, 2009. I woke up in the night to find her standing in the dark looking down at me. I did not know that this would be the first of many nights that she would stand in the dark of the bedroom or her closet, sometimes from shortly after midnight until my alarm went off at 6 a.m.

May, 2010. She started leaving the house during the day while I was working upstairs. She would walk to the bank and demand to see her money, or to the 7-Eleven to report that she was being followed and had left a two-year-old at home alone. I knew we needed full-time help in the house.

October, 2010. She looked at me and said, "I don't think I can take care of myself anymore." This, I already knew.

So she's been in the residential facility for nine months now. She's gotten the best out of all these great professionals have to offer. Looking at the timeline, it should be no surprise that it's time for a new chapter. What would I call this one? Maybe, a time of profound sadness. On Friday I found her sitting at the lunch table, slumped forward, staring blankly straight ahead, waiting on a meal that would not be coming for another 30 minutes. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.