This is just so fucking hard.

I know I've mentioned that my aunt, my mom's younger sister, was also diagnosed with dementia. She's progressing quite different from my mom, faster in some ways, slower in others.

This has been very difficult for all of us. As we've been living the slow process of losing our mother, I know my siblings and I relied on JoAnn being there as a bit of an emotional touchstone. So when she was diagnosed it was perhaps harder than when we figured it out for my mom, who'd been slipping for a while, so the realization was different.

I've always been close to both my mom's sisters. Losing Judy, the same year my dad died, was horrific. JoAnn, in particular, is one of the people who kept me alive during those horrid teen years. She kept me, as best she could, in books, and those books were my lifeline.

She moved to assisted living in February and as we feared, hates it. And she feels -and a few of her friends agree- that she's been losing functionality faster and faster, and very differently than my mom, with her language and ability to express herself going quickly..

JoAnn had decided she wasn't going to stick around for the horrid decline of dementia and had already planned and set up her date with MAID, Canada's euthanasia program. We certainly weren't happy with it, but also acknowledge that it's perhaps the last decision she can make for herself, and I cannot blame anyone who doesn't want to go through the utter deterioration of death with dementia.

March 2025 was her plan.

But now, she wants to move it up to "real soon". I'm devastated. Next year was bad enough, but there was still time, holidays, more visits etc so look forward to. No longer. They're talking to her MAID contact next week I guess to see about moving the data to sometime in the next "few months".

The grief of losing my mother has been ongoing, gradual. This is different and feels acute. My aunt is still enough there that the loss is going to be very different.