{"id":5481,"date":"2006-01-15T12:41:49","date_gmt":"2006-01-15T12:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html"},"modified":"2006-01-15T12:41:49","modified_gmt":"2006-01-15T12:41:49","slug":"difficult-days-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html","title":{"rendered":"Difficult days ahead.."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine has recently brought her mother in to live with her because her mother&#8217;s Alzheimer&#8217;s has stepped up the pace of its attack. Her mother is highly functional and has very clear moments, but at the same time, the basic inner dynamic is that she doesn&#8217;t initiate action. She&#8217;ll eat, but not unless it&#8217;s put in front of her. She&#8217;ll bathe if taken to the shower, etc. It is as if her inner life has completely overwhelmed her daily existence. She is also starting to wander, another cause for concern and action. In mid-December, my friend awoke at 5 am to find her mother gone from the house. Four hours later they found her &#8211; about 4 miles away. I&#8217;ve seen the mother several times, but couldn&#8217;t get a sense of how old she is. I asked.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;65.&quot; <\/p>\n<p>I was shocked.<\/p>\n<p>My friend nodded her head ruefully. &quot;Yup. She&#8217;s got her physical health, she&#8217;s got plenty of money (from owning and managing property), but she&#8217;s getting more and more helpless by the day.&quot; <\/p>\n<p>The lesson she&#8217;s taking away: &quot;Don&#8217;t waste a minute that you have, because sooner than you can say, it will be gone&#8230;&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine has recently brought her mother in to live with her because her mother&#8217;s Alzheimer&#8217;s has stepped up the pace of its attack. Her mother is highly functional and has very clear moments, but at the same time, the basic inner dynamic is that she doesn&#8217;t initiate action. She&#8217;ll eat, but not&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Difficult days ahead.. - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Difficult days ahead.. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A friend of mine has recently brought her mother in to live with her because her mother&#8217;s Alzheimer&#8217;s has stepped up the pace of its attack. Her mother is highly functional and has very clear moments, but at the same time, the basic inner dynamic is that she doesn&#8217;t initiate action. She&#8217;ll eat, but not&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-01-15T12:41:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Difficult days ahead.. - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Difficult days ahead.. - Via Media","og_description":"A friend of mine has recently brought her mother in to live with her because her mother&#8217;s Alzheimer&#8217;s has stepped up the pace of its attack. Her mother is highly functional and has very clear moments, but at the same time, the basic inner dynamic is that she doesn&#8217;t initiate action. She&#8217;ll eat, but not&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-01-15T12:41:49+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html","name":"Difficult days ahead.. - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-01-15T12:41:49+00:00","dateModified":"2006-01-15T12:41:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/difficult-days-ahead.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Difficult days ahead.."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}