Goodnight, Sweet: A Caregiver’s Long Goodbye

Caring for Loved Ones with Alzheimer’s and Dementia

She was twenty-nine years old. She had been married a mere eight months. Suddenly her precious grandparents needed her help. Equipped only with the documents provided by their lawyer, Leah Stanley navigated Medicare and Medicaid in the dark of ignorance, working her way along the tangled path of providing care for her Grandma and Grandpa who were suffering with Alzheimer’s and an unspecified form of dementia, respectively.

In Goodnight, Sweet, Leah explores the world of elder care where she found that making the right decision on behalf of someone else was not always an obvious choice, and along the way she discovered that not every family member shared her vision of loving the people who needed care but were instead dazzled by the notion of inheritance. At times she was able to stand on nothing more than faith in Jesus Christ, but Leah moved through one difficult day after another, until finally she was able to look back and realize that Jesus had stayed exactly where He said He would–carrying her through the dark waters so that she could survive the indescribable world of a caregiver.

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. (Psalm 119:105)