Shopping trip blues

Today I had to go grocery shopping for the first time since I returned from being with Mom in New Mexico. It’s a chore I don’t enjoy, as it aggravates my vertigo which can send me into mini panic attacks. I can’t wait to exit back into the fresh air (though today it was quite chilly.)

I can’t pass the magazine aisle without thinking about Dad, and how that was his safe place, where he would kill an hour flipping through the news magazines while Mom and I did the family grocery shopping.

That was before the Alzheimer’s. Once his mind began to fail, Dad lost all of his safe places. Reading went from Dad’s most enjoyable hobby to a foreign concept. Soon he was left with nothing but the ability to walk, to wander aimlessly with no destination and no concept of home.

Thinking about mundane tasks from a dementia perspective makes one realize that they are indeed fortunate to be able to go grocery shopping and run other pesky errands with their mind fully intact. Sometimes we truly don’t appreciate all of the little things we do to keep ourselves alive.