Skip to main content

Sunday Memories

Being a stay-at-home for 15 years (hard to believe it's been that long) the weekends seem just like another day of the week.  Saturdays we usually go to Mass, hang out as a family and kind of goof off.  Sundays are reserved for washing clothes, getting ready for the week ahead and used to be when we would have my mother-in-law over for dinner.  My husband was an only child and my mother-in-law was very close to him.  As my mother-in-law got older and I got to know her better, I feel like she was one of my best friends.  I would wash her clothes and try to visit her as much as I could.  Starting with this time last year she started having a lot of memory problems.  Around the Christmas of 2010, she was admitted to the hospital because she wasn't eating.  As we soon discovered she had advanced dementia.  While the kids were at school my husband and I would go to the hospital and sit by her bedside.  She was really not able to communicate very well with us.  It was heartbreaking to watch my husband sit by her side and her not be able to talk.  About a week or so before she passed she had a few moments of clarity.  I wrote them down on a slip of paper and keep that piece of paper with me to look at when I am missing her a lot.  My mother-in-law had a lot of siblings and she was the last of her siblings to pass away.  I used to tell her a lot that I thought she was very strong.  I feel like I learned a lot from her and feel so blessed to have known her.  I really miss her (it's been almost 6 months since she passed).  What I wouldn't give to have her over again for Sunday dinner :)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Those "Steps" to Independence Can Be Hard

We are heading towards 600 orders for Dominic's business. Since our long-term goal for Baked Goods By Dominic is having a "brick-and-mortar" and hire those with disabilities, it is essential and imperative that I continue to teach him all parts of the business. Since I prompted Dominic for so many years for speech, he has become "prompt dependent." What that essentially means is that he will look at me for a prompt, like, "what do you do next?" I do that one a lot. Dominic has been going to a private speech therapist for over ten years and she reminds me often that Dominic usually will know the answer, if I am patient and wait for him. That has been a very hard habit to break! Dominic has an incredible memory, so I put it to the test this morning. I didn't write out the steps, I wanted to see how much he could do completely on his own. We have a customer picking up his order today, but the only thing that had been done is putting the cookies into t...

Why We Pursued Guardianship of our Son with Autism

Last Thursday morning, my husband, Dominic and I went to our county's Probate Court and had Dominic's Guardianship Hearing. My husband and I are Co-Guardians, and we were granted "Partial Guardianship," which means Dominic can make some of his own decisions (future educational and vocational placement options, what to wear and how he wants to spend his free time), but my husband and I will make his medical, health care, legal, contractual and major financial decisions. The subject of Guardianship in the disability "world" has been and continues to be a controversial and divisive topic.  I was a panelist for an Autism Conference this past summer and presented on what it's like to have a child with Autism. Towards the end of my presentation, I mentioned that Dominic had just turned 18 and that we were going through the Guardianship process. When the attendees could ask questions, the first person that went up to the microphone started telling me that I was...

Presume Competence

Since we have traveled outside of the United States since Dominic was very small, we have had to get him a Children's Passport every five years. Since his current one expires in February of 2024 and he is now 19, we had to apply for an Adult Passport. I don't know why my husband and I picked Dominic's first day of school and Michigan State University moving in their students, but the appointment was yesterady at 3 p.m. We had gathered all of the documents needed and then went into a special room in the East Lansing Post Office just for Passports. The three of us sat down and the clerk asked Dominic his age. He said, "19." Since we were also getting his picture taken for the Passport, he went into a separate room, where she took a picture of him and then let him look at it to make sure he liked it (it will be his picture for the next 10 years)!  He said he did, so he sat back down with us. The clerk filled out a bit more of the paperwork and then she let Dominic s...