This was the first poem on my Web site, written in September 1994, just after I began taking care I’m my mother. Just a little background, I grew up on a farm, my parents farmed, but as they got older, the farming gradually decreased and eventually ended. In my mother’s memories it should still have been active and thriving, thus some of her distress as her Alzheimer’s worsened.
The link above will take you to what was the prologue, if you will, for my Web site, A Year to Remember, which I began in 1996 just after my mother’s death It began with just a couple pages like this one, then my journal that I’d kept while I was my mother’s caregiver, my poems, and links to everything I could find on Alzheimer’s. Then others started sending in their poems, articles and stories, and I put up pages for them. At one point it consisted of over 400 individual pages or HTML files. At one time it was on a list of the Top Ten Most Awarded Personal Homepages. Most of the awards were just ones that one personal site would give another, but there were a few pretty official ones too. One of those was 1st place in personal homepages from my ISP at the time. It was an awesome time to be out there in 1996, we all knew each other, didn’t matter where we lived, we wrote, we created graphic and music, we knit it all together with HTML, and we praised each others creations and gave awards. It was through this I began healing. Then in 2000 I put my journal, poems, and photos from the Web site into a book. And now from 2017 through the rest of my life, I shall blog, revamp the Web site, and publish 2nd editions of my books.
http://www.zarcrom.com/users/yeartorem/HerStory.html
This time I’m back to blogging seriously because I am fed up with Facebook and how people treat each other on there. It’s like I’m forbidden to post on Facebook, by a good friend, because she thinks I’ve got her on a group where I was sharing things about Alzheimer’s. There was no such group, I was simply posting to my Facebook wall, or timeline or whatever you call it. I tried to explain how she could unfollow me, but I don’t think it ever did sink in. So now it’s been about a week since I’ve posted on Facebook. So now I’m moving to Word Press, starting up my blog again, where I will share everything I wish about Alzheuser’s, including sharing my old Web site begun in 1996, and even sharing individual pages from it of my journal, my poems, other people’s poems they had sent to me back then, and their articles and stories. Which is what I had been doing on Facebook and maybe I had been doing it a bit much just because November is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month and National Family Caregivers Month. I tend to be gung-ho for the cause about three months out of every year with my posts and with wearing purple, and well, I guess people just get tired of it. So, I’m back to blogging, and eventually will revamp my old 1996 dinosaur of a Web site, oh yes, and begin working on 2nd editions of my two books. That should be enough to keep me out of trouble for a few years.
It was my 20th year walking in memory of my mother this Sept. 23, just two days before my 62nd birthday. For the second year in a row I was a Grand Champion, raising over $1000. I led Team Awesome, and together we raised $1697. My team came in 4th, and I also came in 4th from the top as an individual. I couldn’t keep away the tears during the Memory Garden ceremony. Twenty-one years later, my sister who is a late-stage Parkinson’s patient, also is getting dementia. I will walk for her next year too, whether or not she is alive, because the Walk to End Alzheimer’s is not only for Alzheimer’s but other dementias as well. I will walk as long as I can walk, and even if I cannot, my team members will probably push me in a wheelchair. I will keep on, hoping that one day there will be a white flower as a part of the Memory Garden ceremony. Now there are purple, yellow, orange and blue for the following:
Blue — I have Alzheimer’s
Yellow — I am supporting or caring for someone with Alzheimer’s
Purple — I have lost someone to Alzheimer’s
Orange — I support the cause and a vision of a world without Alzheimer’s
For years I’ve been hearing there’s going to be an epidemic of Alzheimer’s when we baby-boomers reach our senior years. Just had that brought back to me today, and I realized, we’re there. So many of my friends, acquaintances, co-workers, family, etc. are in their 60s, or like me, fast approaching them. They are beginning, will begin more and more I suspect, to ask questions because I was caregiver to a mother with Alzheimer’s. It’s time to think about that again, to gather and share information again, to catch up my old Web site, to do a 2nd ed. my books even, eventually. Along with an economy that’s falling apart, we are about to have an epidemic of Alzheimer’s, and I’ve got to get ready. Been there, done that, with my mother, have distanced myself from that, but it’s time to come back, to be ready, to be available, because unless there’s a cure found, it will be an epidemic like none other.
My mother
I’ll be walking in the Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk again this year, for the 11th year. My mother had Alzheimer’s and she died in 1996. I was with her full-time for a year and four months before putting her in a nursing home. Then she died four months later. Not an easy thing to go through. Hard to believe it’s been over twelve years now.
Thank you so much for whatever you can do to help patients and caregivers everywhere and to help find a cure for this disease.
I don’t even know where all my blogs are, not to mention Web sites. Got dozens of ideas but no organization, no time either. But here I go again…
Remembering My Mother & Alzheimer's .. 
