NORWAY – Rose DePerte knew she and her dad couldn’t care for her mother, Gloria Herrick, at their Cottage Street home any longer.

Rose’s two sisters and brother, Oxford County Sheriff Lloyd C. “Skip” Herrick, kept telling Rose and Lloyd Sr. it was time to let go.

“They could see that caring for momma 24/7 was taking such a toll,” Rose said.

Gloria N. Herrick died Jan. 6 at age 79 at the Maine Veterans Home in Paris, surrounded by her family.

An estimated 19 million Americans have a family member with Alzheimer’s disease, a type of dementia that slowly, over a period of years, robs a person of virtually all of their memories.

Skip was 14 years old when his grandmother came down with Alzheimer’s. He grew up witnessing the disease, so when his mother started showing symptoms, he knew she had it too.

“There were things that we were seeing in mom that happened to Grammie,” Skip said. “She did a lot of wandering, and she would have panic attacks and wouldn’t know who was around her.”

By the summer of 2002, Gloria’s Alzheimer’s disease was well advanced. She had become very agitated and forgetful, sometimes not recognizing her own husband.

At the same time, years of accumulated stress from the 24-hour, hands-on care was taking its toll on both Rose and her father. Lloyd Sr. watched over his wife all the time in their upstairs apartment. But he couldn’t have done it without the help of Rose, who lives downstairs with her husband, Tony, and daughter Alana.

Lloyd senior, 86, was hospitalized twice in 2002 for exhaustion. At 61, Rose was trying to cope with her high blood pressure and fibromaelgia, and help her mom at the same time.

“You get so run down,” she said.

Still, when a bed became available at the Alzheimer’s unit of the Maine Veterans Home, the decision to let go of her mother’s care was agonizing for everyone.

“It was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made in my life,” Rose said. “But I knew that if something happens to me, what’s going to happen to dad?”

Almost inevitably, however, when dealing with Alzheimer’s disease, “It does come to a point in time when we have no control,” she said. “We are just forced to make these decisions, even though you feel as though you’re letting them down.”

Added her brother, “That particular disease to me is the most dehumanizing disease I’ve ever been associated with. It takes their dignity. It takes their personality. Besides looking the way they look, there is nothing familiar about them,” he said.

For the first six months she begged her family, including Rose’s sisters, Betty King and Gloria Whittier, to take her home.

“It was a heartbreaker,” Skip said. “The big thing is trying to continue to communicate with them.” Skip visited his mother as often as he could, and went with the attitude, “I’m going to cherish every conversation.”

Gloria Herrick spent 18 months in the nursing home. She received excellent care, but Skip “hated” her being there, hated having her mother’s body alive but her mind gone.

Around 11 p.m. on Jan. 6, with her family surrounding her, Gloria drew her last breath.

“There was no struggle,” said Skip. “It was very peaceful.”

Copy the Story Link