Story by Nancy Hager

Workshop Attendee and Volunteer

I was very blessed to have a great mom and dad as growing up an only child my parents taught me a lot of lessons in life. My mom taught me to share and to care about people by her actions. She taught me to share early in life and I think that is why I encourage others to share their grief journey. My mom showed me her love and kindness toward others. My mom was a great caregiver for my dad for years until he passed in 2000. I went to Ky. to help my mom to get him into a facility because it was wearing my mom down. We did get him in a place close to mom in the same town so she was so devoted to him and went to set with him every day.

My grief journey with my mom was like a rollercoaster of a lot of losses in which I experienced when she started to get dementia. That is one hard illness to deal with for the family. She just wasn’t the mom I use to know. She lived with us for about a year and a half. I moved her here from Ky. and had to find a facility to place her which was one of the hardest things I had to do for my mom and dad. When I first took her there she hated me and said terrible things to me but I knew it was not my mom. That again is another stage of loss for my mom. I can remember driving out to see her and everything just seem to be closing in on me and I just prayed God take this I just can’t handle this anymore and I just felt a relief come over me.  She settled in and did very well there, she really seemed to like it there and always happy to see me. She knew me most of the time but one time I asked her if she knew me and she says you are my sister and I said no mom I am your daughter and she says that is ever better. I will always remember that it was precious to me. Later she went in the hospital and the doctor said she wouldn’t live through the night. So again I thought I had lost her. The next morning she woke up and then returned back to the facility. She lived several years after that. She started to have some mini strokes. She started to decline and after the hospital trip she was in a wheelchair and was unable to walk and again those are grieving times for me. So my grief was a long journey and I think because of all I went through for years with her i was able to cope with her death. She passed April of 2017. It was hard but I think I could find comfort in being able to share and help others by understanding their grief and learning to listen. I do believe that God prepares us as I look back on it. Just how things were just put in place with His help. My comfort was having the faith that God would give me the strength. There were hard times but there are so many good memories. It has now become my passion to work with people who are going through their grief journey.

I was able to go through one of the workshops with Faith and Grief and it was great. We had a great group and we all seemed to form a bond in which we could cry or laugh and share our stories with people who were understanding because we had been there. I also took training to facilitate support groups.