Transcript
Speaker: and she would pound the table. You are not taking my keys away. You are absolutely not taking my keys away. And we're lying in bed one night and my husband says to me, i think she means her keys. I'm like, what are you talking about?
Speaker: And he says, I think she means we can't take her keys away. Her keys represent the car and her freedom.
Speaker: Welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Rinaldi. This is a space to explore the full spectrum of grief, from the kind that comes with death to the kind that shows up in life's many transitions.
Speaker: Through stories and conversations, we remind each other that we're not alone. Your journey matters, and here we're figuring it out together. Let's dive right in to today's episode.
Speaker: Let's start with a quick disclaimer. This podcast includes personal stories and perspectives on topics like grief, health, and mental wellness. The views expressed by guests are their own and may reflect individual experiences that are not meant as medical advice.
Speaker: As the host, I hold space for diverse voices, but that does not mean I endorse every viewpoint shared. Please listen with care and take what resonates with you.
Speaker: Hello, today I am joined by Sarah Bosberg. She is a psychologist, a busy mom, and she never really thought she'd write a memoir, but she has.
Speaker: And she is now joining us to be able to share her story and more about her book. And here she is. Welcome, Sarah.
Speaker: hey thank you for having me. It's a privilege to be here. Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your story. And again, the name of the book is Who Will Name the Bees?
Speaker: And I love that title. And I'm still curious to know like why it is of the even of the title. So we'll find out more as we go along. So let's talk about your upbringing and being an only child.
Speaker: and your dynamics of you and your mom. And that's that's particularly a a lot of what the book is, is your relationship with your mother and her health. She had Alzheimer's, is that correct? Yes, she did. all Alzheimer's.
Speaker: So let's talk about your upbringing and childhood, please. Welcome. um My mom was a not necessarily a warm, somewhat distant mom as far as giving physical attention, but she was extremely attentive to me on as far as my education was concerned, as far as talking to me.
Speaker: um I could talk to her about, i was allowed to talk to her about anything. i could ask any questions so long as they had didn't have to do with her upbringing. But if I had questions about friends or life or whatever, um that all went really well until I hit my teens. And then i was really miserable, as many teens are.
Speaker: And i think I was very miserable for her. So that made for... with some stress. And I think as time went on, i think my mom was a very anxious person.
Speaker: And I think my dad mitigated that to a large degree. She depended on him for that. I didn't realize how bad that was until he died and she looked to me to mitigate her anxiety.
Speaker: And I was clueless, absolutely clueless. I didn't realize what he had done. I looked back and, you know, hindsight's 20-20. I saw a lot of things that I didn't recognize as they were happening.
Speaker: um And she saw him as an authority. So if he said something was not worth worrying about, She didn't worry about it. I found her very frustrating well into my um I think she found me likewise.
Speaker: um And our relationship didn't really change until I was older. And then all of a sudden she was gone. Not all of a sudden, but she started to to to deteriorate and she was gone. So um it was it was an up and down kind of thing over the years.
Speaker: over Yeah, the relationship just kind of changing throughout time and with the different circumstances that occurred. How old were you when your father died? In our late twenty s In your late twenty s And how much later was it that then your mother found someone else to be with her?
Speaker: Two years. Two years later. So we at that moment when your mother, um when your father died and when she remarried, had she already started expressing anything with mental, um you know, with memory loss or anything like that at that age or not yet?
Speaker: It's really hard to know um because the changes are very subtle and I can look back and say that there are things that I can definitely identify as being related to the disease and then other things that are sort of nebulous.
Speaker: For example, judgment is supposed to be the first thing to go. And I think that her marrying her second husband was a judgment call. um I think there were tons of red flags and she didn't pay attention to them, but love does funny things to people. So was that really a judgment call or not And I, I certainly would have never thought told her that she couldn't or, you know, I would have never tried to exercise that control over that kind of a situation. So I let it play out as it was going to play out.
Speaker: In early parts of the book, you share right away really like what it was to even see your mom in that relationship. You mentioned bruises and things like that. So can you share about that and being the daughter of someone that you know is not with someone that is caring for her the way she should be caring? And how did you navigate that yourself?
Speaker: So, well, there are a couple of caveats here. No one cared for my mother the way I thought she should be cared for. And yet I couldn't do the caring for her. I was a sandwi i' was i was a sandwich generation.
Speaker: i had tween children that I was raising that needed, you know, to get to school and to their activities and so on and so forth. And I had my mother um on the other side of that. And I was the cream cheese in the middle, the right?
Speaker: um So there's that. and then um i don't think but first of all it wasn't at the beginning of their relationship it was later on into it that things were more obvious and i think to a certain extent as with a lot of families there was denial about her ineffectiveness her memory her odd little behaviors, those sorts of things.
Speaker: So it's very hard to know. i know i don't think he wanted to know. um And I was suspicious, but couldn't do anything, ah would ask not so pointed questions here and there.
Speaker: r Yes, she had bruises. She had a couple of black eyes. She had some really awful bruises on ah parts of her arms and legs that can be typical places for bruises. So it again, it was hard to know.
Speaker: um whether or not those were her own clumsiness and she had always been clumsy, but she didn't have explanations for all but one of the ones that were then I noticed that were really concerning um there was only one reasonable explanation and there was no reasonable explanation for the black eyes she simply said i fell off my harley my mother did not ride a motorcycle um she always wished she had but she never did um so
Speaker: was he doing that I don't know. Was he frustrated with her? I'm sure. um Did he understand why he was experiencing the kind of frustration he was with her?
Speaker: and don't think so. So I have to give him a little bit of grace, it's hard because there were things he was neglectful later on.
Speaker: And, um, that was extremely frustrating. Um, especially the way he shrugged it off. Uh, and I talk about that in the book. There's, uh,
Speaker: a section where I talk about she had a second surgery, a second occurrence of breast cancer. The first time she had breast cancer, she had one breast removed, which is not what a that was years and years ago. I mean, years before she, many, many years before she died.
Speaker: um But mostly when people discover cancer in one breast, they take them both off and she did not. But that was not the thinking at the time.
Speaker: um So when she had the second occurren occurrence, which was after 10 years, um she had the surgery again.
Speaker: And he was working at the time, but she wasn't for a good portion of their relationship. He didn't have a job. oh um He was working at the time. he i picked her up from the hospital when she came home because he had to work and but nothing wrong with that. and um I picked her up, I brought her home, and I set her up with you know things to eat and drink and her medications and reminded her what she needed to do and all of that kind of stuff stayed with her for a while and then left knowing that he was going to be home soon.
Speaker: um And he brought her home McDonald's, um which is fine. We have cravings for things after surgery and all of that kind of stuff. But she didn't eat all of it. And he put it in the refrigerator for her to have the next day in case she wanted it.
Speaker: You know, that might be high food. That's not sick food. That's not recovery food. i learn and You know, yeah. So might be when you have the munchies, but my mom didn't have the munchies. And, uh,
Speaker: Then he refused to change her help her change her dressings that were on her back. They took skin from her back i'm to help with the amount of skin that they took off um her breast because they had to take nipple tissue and stuff. So they took a huge section off there.
Speaker: And um she had immediate reconstruction. So he refused to change her dressings and they got infected.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I was wildly furious. how How old was your mom? How old was she around this time? The second time around with?
Speaker: Approximately. 57. Oh, I'm sorry. lied. um The second time. Early 70s. In her early 70s. So that's, yeah, and that's a major surgery to to go through that if it's not tended to, your body takes so much longer to heal as we age too because we're missing a lot of collagen. We just don't have the same amount of, you know, ah way of recovering as we do.
Speaker: So at what point, well, when did you first off like this is like her physical health? At what point did you start then really acknowledging that she had Alzheimer's or when was she diagnosed?
Speaker: She wasn't officially diagnosed until a couple of months before she went into memory care because we couldn't get her to the doctor. I couldn't get her to the doctor.
Speaker: her husband didn't want to get her to the doctor because I think he knew what was going to be the upshot of that was that, you know, she wasn't going to be there anymore. r
Speaker: So there's that. um My grandmother had had Alzheimer's before her and my mother went the same path. I saw um the forgetting things, the not remembering.
Speaker: My mother didn't remember names on a good day, but she didn't remember our names or um friends that she had known forever over and ever and ever, whose names she never forgot.
Speaker: um she forgot how to do normal things like make a sandwich or um to take her medications, which I made the assumption my bad that he would attend to those things because he was living with her and he was her husband. So, you know, sweetheart, you need to take this. It's your morning medication kind of thing. And he never attempted to do that.
Speaker: It wasn't that she refused and she might have because she was difficult at that point. Um, there were personality changes. she got really angry. um And so, and really paranoid.
Speaker: um So she might have refused, but he didn't try. um and then she ah she wasn't safe. ah um At one point she left the house without saying anything to him and walked down a secondary road, a very busy, windy secondary road.
Speaker: more than two miles um to get to a little shopping center. um And one of her neighbors picked her up and offered her a ride home. and don't know what would have happened to her if that neighbor hadn't been there on that day um and brought her home and he had no idea that she was gone.
Speaker: So there were all kinds of safety concerns, but little things that happened. And then she'd be fine. And then she'd seem to deteriorate. And then she'd be fine. And I reached out to the town social worker. I got nothing. reached out to...
Speaker: On my church, they said that there was very little they could do. i reached out to DMV because she was driving left on the road. She was still driving. um and she was driving left on the road. And she absolutely insisted that she was going to have keep her keys, which is another story I'll happily tell. But...
Speaker: Let me stick on this train of thought. um So she was driving left on the road. She wasn't safe. I mentioned it to her physician. Her physician said, oh, just, you know, offer to drive her places. Your mother's lovely. She's just forgetful at times. I'm like, no, she's not safe.
Speaker: She's not safe. But it was, there yeah, it it didn't work. I didn't get anywhere. um ah talked to a nurse recently who said that The medical system really failed me. And I've been trying not to think that um in this process, but we were failed in many small ways that made big differences.
Speaker: for her Yeah, the the part of the, what always just is so mind boggling to me is how the Department of or Motor Vehicles operates. Because I lived with my grandmother for three years.
Speaker: And i remember there were times that I'm like, oh my gosh, this is not safe anymore. And her driver's license would just be renewed. Like there would be no, like at any point in aging, at least, ah you know, in her, that they would come back and do a driving test again. at all. Like it would just be automatically renewed without having to take a driving test. And it was similar to you. My aunt had to then reach out to the DMV and said, can you please have my mom come in and do a driving test? Because it was the only way that we were going to be able to fully
Speaker: take that, you know, away from her because it was just not safe at all for her or or and she shouldn't have Alzheimer's. it was just just just in general, her reflexes and stuff had changed.
Speaker: So, yeah, it always surprised me. I don't know if it's that way in every single state if or if it or or what that they don't like. I am. um doctors were able to make a recommendation to dmv that someone not drive which was the reason that i talked to the doctor about it and then she you know blew me off um and said that she couldn't do that which was not true but i didn't know google um you know it i'm i'm trying to reach out for resources and it's just not happening and actually there was google at the time but
Speaker: There wasn't the volume of information that we can get a hold of very quickly now. And back to the keys for a second, and it dovetails into a couple of the questions that you asked me, like, how did you know?
Speaker: My mother became, there my mother was a thinker. She was really smart. capable woman. And she was a thinker. And we used to have all kinds of philosophical conversations when I was growing up, even when when things were not good between us.
Speaker: oh Um, we could have some really, truly deep conversations. Um, and she became so literal about things. It was just so odd.
Speaker: And that's one of those look back things where I say, oh but my husband caught onto it. um
Speaker: we were we had been wrestling and wrestling and wrestling with the car issue. And she had become more willing to allow me to drive her places or to allow her husband to drive her places.
Speaker: But he still allowed her um to go out on her own. she He wouldn't, ah in his defense, in that instance, he He wouldn't have been able to keep her home unless he had physically restrained her. So there was that. But she was still driving left. Like, let her leave home and call the police and say, hey, this is the license plate. This is where she's going.
Speaker: Please pull her over. um But anyway, um she kept saying, We had mentioned not driving to her and, oh, the explosiveness of that whole situation was horrible. um And I've heard that story from so many families. I don't think we were any different than many, many, many others.
Speaker: But um she kept saying, you are not taking my keys away from me. you are at And she would pound the table. You are not taking my keys away. You are absolutely not taking my keys away. We're lying in bed one night and my husband says to me,
Speaker: I think she means her keys. I'm like, what are you talking about? And he says, i think she means we can't take her keys away.
Speaker: Her keys represent the car and her freedom. But at that point, none of us was really sure if she knew what to do when she got in the car. Like, did she know to put in the key? Did she know to turn it in?
Speaker: Like, And it was a key card, so it wasn't a fob or anything. um So did she know it? Did she know to leave it in park? Did she know to put her foot on the brake? Like the whole business, we we were clearly wondering whether how much she knew about that sequence and the executive function necessary to do those kinds of things.
Speaker: um And so we left the keys in the drawer and my husband took out her keys battery and put a note in the cavity of the battery holder that said, this is someone who has Alzheimer's. If you happen to be called to assist with this car, please have it towed to such and such a place and they'll take care of, they'll call us and take care of it.
Speaker: Oh, she never, she had her keys in her drawer. He was dead on. She had her keys in her drawer and she was happy and none the wiser at that point.
Speaker: Like she just never even thought of it again. Right. because she couldn't like in the Because she couldn't see them. She could see the keys and she knew that she knew that she had the freedom that she wanted because that's what the keys represented. The keys were what she needed. Yeah. So you leaving the keys, even if she couldn't drive, was all she needed.
Speaker: That part of the freedom is so true because it did change completely the trajectory of my grandmother's health when huke when we did, when she did not get her license approved.
Speaker: I'm sorry, autonomy. Yes, the autonomy. Yes, it's huge. And um so I could see just even just that physical part of it just still being there. her She could still think that it was.
Speaker: At what point then when you transitioned into taking her then to a mental memory care facility, how did you do that? Because if it was hard then to the the par part of even just not being able to physically not let her get on a car to drive, right? And you had to kind of be clever here of how you did things.
Speaker: How was that transition there? um It was agonizing and difficult. And there's a second husband story in that also.
Speaker: so We all agreed, and he was on the same page with us, that she needed to go. We knew she had Alzheimer's. She'd been diagnosed not not just a short period behind. He knew that she was...
Speaker: She was really just shuffling around the house, not really doing a whole lot, but dangerous because she'd go wandering. Um, and so there was some acceptance. I don't think he thought it was as bad as we thought it was, but, or the doctor thought it was, but, um, he didn't, he didn't want to cause his life was going to change.
Speaker: Um, so. I knew she would not go to the memory facility to have an interview and they like to interview everybody and they interview them there and they show them around and all of that, which I had already done. I had toured the place and everything.
Speaker: Um, so they agreed to meet her at a restaurant and the, um, person who was doing the interviewing, the, um, supervisor for the place actually knew my mother's second husband. So um she, I think we got a little bit of TLC that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten.
Speaker: So she met them at a local restaurant and oh how lovely and isn't it nice to see you and all of that kind of stuff. And they chatted it up and she evaluated her um at that point.
Speaker: and called me after the um restaurant interview and said, we'd like to, we know you're we're not scheduled to have your mother come for like the next six or eight weeks. I don't remember what it was. She said, but we'd like to move her up.
Speaker: um And I said, oh, okay, what's going on And she said, well well, we're afraid that she's being abused. I have to remember that this is a friend oh her husband.
Speaker: So there's that. Um, and, and I asked her what made her think that because I didn't think my mother had any bruises or whatever at the time. And she said that they did notice some bruises, um, and on on her wrists, I think, if I remember correctly and, um, the outside of her wrists and, um, that every, he gesticulated a lot when he spoke.
Speaker: um And every time he raised his hands to emphasize what he was saying, she cowered in her seat. um So that just turned my stomach, but we moved things up and we um got her in there and lied to her about it. We said that she had to go in.
Speaker: And in the end, looking back on it, I probably didn't need to lie to her. I probably just needed to say, this is where we're going today, period, end of sentence. And then, you know, do basically what I did.
Speaker: But I went through a big, long story with her about how she needed to get, she'd always had blood pressure issues and that the doctor either wanted her in the hospital or at this facility to get her blood pressure under control. So she fought me a little bit about it, but not terribly. um Yeah.
Speaker: So that was how we did it. It was really hard to walk away from her. Like they said, get her involved in something. when you're there.
Speaker: um And they were having a little concert and they were dancing and stuff. So that worked fine. um Get her involved in something and then leave when she doesn't notice. And I didn't do that. I just said, my mom, I'll see you later, which was true.
Speaker: um And she said, oh, you're coming back for me. And I said, yes, I'm coming back. um So i I prevaricated because I felt like i needed to. If I told her I wasn't coming back or she was staying there, I thought that she would have resisted. She I don't I don't know what she would have done. But what how was it then when you did come back the first time after that drop off?
Speaker: How was it the first time you came back to see her? How was it for you emotionally? And how was her, do you recall that it, whether she had any recollection of like, well, you didn't come back for me that time, or if it was just like, at that point in her Alzheimer's. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: No, she had no re recollection of me not coming back for her. i got a a lot of confusion. Like, why am I here? um oh it's for your blood pressure. You know, that kind of thing. And um I don't know all these people. Oh, well, it's a good opportunity for you to make some friends, Mom. Well, I don't want to make friends here. Oh, okay.
Speaker: But you may as well. You're here and enjoy... what's happening while you're here. And she was a problem for them. um a lot of the residents were sedentary and quiet and my mother was not.
Speaker: And she did not sleep at night. So she wouldn't watch TV during the day. She wouldn't always involved in the activities that they had for them. um she snuck into people's rooms to use their phones and then she would call home and say that there was, you know, strange, because there were strange people there or she wanted to come home. It was really pitiful. was, it was horrible to listen to them.
Speaker: um And she would try and chat up the nurses all the time because my mother was a professional. And these were these were the people that she presumed were professionals. She was probably with, probably 75% of the other people that were there with her had also been professionals. But my mother saw the nurses, she saw the nurses,
Speaker: differential. And she saw the nurses as professional and she saw herself as professional. And so it was the nurses that she wanted you to talk to and they didn't, they were busy.
Speaker: That is a confusion, is still a confusion to me. um And yeah. And then at nighttime, she would, what we used to refer to as soldier around. My mother was never a good sleeper.
Speaker: um So she would soldier around. She'd just walk around and they'd take her back to bed and, or tell her to go back to bed. And she wouldn't, it was almost like telling her not to drive. And yeah, it became an issue.
Speaker: Does it still bring up a lot of emotion to think of those moments of the, of her in the memory care? I've talked about it so much.
Speaker: Um, the, the first couple of times I talked about it, I cried. Um, you know, in a setting like this, i I cried. Now I can get through it without crying. And I just read an article and it was a neuroscience article, but it talked about um resilience and being able to describe things.
Speaker: um And I'm wondering if that's kind of not the place I've come to um with my mom, just that, you know, I've been able to describe all things that went on and I'm in a different place about it, it's still it's still very sad.
Speaker: And there are times that it hits me, but for the most part, I can talk about it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting how sometimes just, I could talk very like matter of factly about certain things. I'm like, oh, and this is what happened. that the da with But then there's other parts that I may come up with something that has to do with my grief that end up choking me up that catch at me off guard.
Speaker: And it could be, you know, it's been almost 30 years since my sister died and there would still be things I can talk, fine. And then all of a sudden like, oh, Where did that come from? You know, and it surprises me sometimes when I'm like, wait, why am I getting choked up if I've already said this so many other times?
Speaker: A thousand percent. A thousand percent. um My daughters and i um did the recordings for the audio book. um I read all the stuff that was happening in the present time. The book is structured differently.
Speaker: as what's going on now, um what went on previously, and there's some poetry in between. So I read all the what's going on now, meaning what was going on with my mom in memory care at the time.
Speaker: My younger daughter read all the poetry in between and my older daughter read all the younger me stuff. And listening to that is tough. If I'm gonna have tears, it's gonna be when I'm listening to that, partly because my daughters were old enough to know what was going on and listening to them read about those things and everything is hard, um but it's bittersweet. i mean, there's a lot of of true sweetness in there.
Speaker: um My mom did not stay in the memory care facility that she was in that where she annoyed them a lot.
Speaker: um
Speaker: One morning in December, she decided that they had beautiful maze-like gardens where they could go out into the gardens and not not get themselves into trouble.
Speaker: You know, there were benches and beautiful plantings and it was very well maintained and, you know, winding little pathways and and all of that kind of thing. And my mother was the consummate gardener um and had stuff in her gardens all year round, you know, that was worthy of looking at. So the gardens were enticing to her.
Speaker: And she went out one December morning um and her pajamas and her bare feet to, because it had started to snow and she wanted to watch and listen to the snow in the garden, which was something that I had done at my own house the very same morning.
Speaker: But they sent security out to get her and to bring her in um because she didn't belong and out there in her bare feet. um And her pajamas.
Speaker: And she resisted and they ended up shipping her across town to an Alzheimer's psych unit. um And if you think an Alzheimer's unit or a memory care unit is difficult to do.
Speaker: assimilate to, this was an another world altogether, you know, locked down people with their faces pressed against the window, looking out at a world that they were never going to be in again.
Speaker: and that's where my mother went and that's where her life ended. So yeah, it was that, that was pretty awful. That is so hard to see not only, well, one, the diagnosis, then the decline, and then to have to end your life in that way, you know, it just must be just so hard to see your mother go through that.
Speaker: Thank you for sharing that, not only here on the podcast, but also in your book. I want to ask you about your process of and and deciding of wanting to share your story and why why you chose to write a memoir.
Speaker: And what was that yearning or what what was it that bubbled up? Because it's you're it's the first memoir, correct? Yes.
Speaker: Okay. But you're a poet as well? Are you a poet? It was a work of art. But... um My husband features significantly in this.
Speaker: I had no intention to write a memoir, never saw myself as an author, um didn't was well into it and still didn't see this as being a book.
Speaker: um You know, after my mother died, i stories about her would wake me up in the middle of that i'd wake up in the middle of the night and I'd be thinking about my mom and I'd think about things that had happened, good, bad, otherwise.
Speaker: um and I would ruminate on them. I would just keep keep going and going and going on them. And I'd end up you know, the alarm would go off in the morning and I'd still be awake or i would have fallen asleep like 20 minutes before that freaking thing went off.
Speaker: And. and I, you know, the story at my husband, where you know, would wake up, he'd get up with the alarm and I'd say, oh my God, I haven't had any sleep. I have to go to work.
Speaker: You know, all of that. And um he said, well, how about if you wrote them down? And so I put a pad and pencil by the bed and um it just didn't work. I mean, you know, all the fine motor to get the stuff on the pad and the pencil and futz around with it at night and try not to turn on the light, you know, so that you don't wake everybody up and just, it it didn't work. um And I told him it didn't work. So he said, okay. And he never really said a whole lot else about it.
Speaker: And the next thing I know, he, he comes home with a piece of glass for the top of my night table um He had a piece of glass measured to go on top of my night table.
Speaker: He handed me a Sharpie and he said, write down what you need to write down so you'll remember in the morning, maybe you'll get more sleep. And in fact, I did. And I didn't really have to, didn't have to worry about the funny motor, didn't have to worry about it being all that legible because I could write as big as I wanted to on my night table and did. And so I'd write down phrases and thoughts and vocabulary that i i wanted to use. And I really didn't know what I was going to do with it, except that I put it there. I'd take a picture of it with my phone in the morning and then I'd clean it off with alcohol and I'd be all done. um And after a while, ah we had, by now we had moved to san Diego and um,
Speaker: I wanted to meet people. I wanted to meet people that weren't necessarily in my profession. So, um, I got connected with the San Diego, um, writers Inc.
Speaker: I N K little play on words there. Um, and went to a couple of one-off classes about writing about fiction, writing poetry, you you know, writing fiction, writing poetry, science fiction, you know, stuff like that. Just like a two-hour class on a Saturday morning.
Speaker: They were fun. I met really cool people. And um then somebody said that they were in a memoir class and I got to listening to them talking about it. And I said, gee, I wonder if I could write some of those stories about my mom thinking that Maybe in the end, I might submit one or two to um magazine or something.
Speaker: That was, that was as far, it my thinking didn't really go that far initially. But after that, you know, and being in class a little bit, I thought, okay, I can submit these to magazine or something. And Now maybe I'll get somewhere with that.
Speaker: um But after a while, but i took, ah it was a longer class. It wasn't a one-off. It went a full year. oh So I was with about 30 other people doing the same thing.
Speaker: And we had an assignment every week um to write five pages on a particular topic that we were given and a particular skill that we needed to hone in the process of writing about that topic.
Speaker: um So I would, the classes were Saturday afternoon. I would get up on Saturday. I worked during the week and couldn't put my head to something like that when they got home from work. So i would get up on Saturday morning and I would write my five pages and I would go um to class and we would break up and we would read them and and get feedback and all of that good stuff. And it was fun. I had fun. it was, it was fun.
Speaker: And then there ended up being a pile of these on my desk. um And I was cleaning up my desk and I felt like I needed to organize these. And so I laid them all out on my living room floor um and realized that they were kind of sequential. And i put them in sequential order and realized that I had a volume of information and that it might be helpful to other people who were going through the same thing.
Speaker: um So in the end, the driving force in this was, I felt very alone when I was making all of these decisions and doing all of this with my mom.
Speaker: Although my husband and my besties supported me to the nth degree, it didn't get a lot of help from her husband who should have been more involved. um And you're just making it the family, my husband, my bestie, we're all making decisions or getting information in isolation. There wasn't the kind of information that there is out there now.
Speaker: And even so, it's an amateur business. it's It's really like raising children. yourre your You end up parenting your parent um and you make the best decisions that you can at the time with the information that you have, right? So it's very isolating. You question yourself constantly.
Speaker: And I wanted other people to know that they weren't alone. in this process and that they weren't alone in the experience and that there were people out there who had been through the same thing or something similar.
Speaker: So that became a driving force to doing it. Then had to have others have what you didn't have to be able to have someone else share their story, something that you didn't really know then when you were going through it.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now I am curious about the title. So who will name the bees? Who is going to name the bees and why the title? Um... um So if anyone wants to go to my website, they can name a bee.
Speaker: um It's www.sarahbosberg.com. And you can name, or you can go to www.whowillnamethebees.com and it'll lead you to my webpage. And um there'll be instructions there on how to name a bee.
Speaker: um But the very last over...
Speaker: Mother's Day that I spent with my mother. um Keep in mind that that was a Mother's Day and she died in early June. um And that Mother's Day was after a good six weeks of quarantine in her unit because they had an intestinal virus that kept going around and around and around.
Speaker: um And quarantine had a very different leaning at that time because it was before COVID. um So the isolation and the isolation from her felt really distant. And she wasn't good at talking on the phone at that point.
Speaker: And she wouldn't, she would recognize that my voice was familiar, but she couldn't really carry on a conversation. So we went to visit her for Mother's Day, like lots of other families. I had my husband and the kids with me and were sitting, chatting amicably. was always safe to talk to my mom about gardening and flowers.
Speaker: And that's what we were talking about. And she was holding her own in the conversation, which she hadn't done pretty much since she got there. um And it was great.
Speaker: And then we kind of got to the um end of the conversation and it there was a companionable silence and all good. And then she asked me, um tell me about your gardens this year.
Speaker: And I looked at my husband and he blew me a kiss and I started all over again with the same thing that I had said to her before, recognizing that this is was one of those repetitive moments.
Speaker: And oh she like almost yelled at me, and but she admonished me for sure and said, no, tell me about the, you already told me that.
Speaker: Tell me about the bees. Well, I didn't even know, like when I talked to her sometimes when I would go to visit her, I would tell her about things that were happening. And we had decided the previous fall that we were going to become beekeepers in spring.
Speaker: So we spent the winter researching and finding out where we could get our bees and, sorry, and all of that stuff. And, uh,
Speaker: she She remembered that. I didn't even, she had never asked me anything about it before. i had just, you know, tried to talk to her about things that I thought she might find interest in. So she was just all excited about it. So I told her about them when we talked about how it'd be better for my flowers and how it'd be better for the vegetables and and on and on. And she said, how many bees will there be?
Speaker: And I said, well, mom, we're going to have two queens, two nukes. So that'll be, you know, between 40 and 50,000
Speaker: 40,000 bees, Sarah? How will you find names for them all? And so there's the disease right there, the literalness, the needing names for the bees.
Speaker: She was completely serious and completely innocent and childlike in that moment. So it was lovely and awful all at the same time.
Speaker: um and was a true picture of where she was with her thinking at that moment. And she didn't have. After that, she got sick. She ended up with pneumonia and she died. So there wasn't a lot of quality time with her after that.
Speaker: So I look back on that with a fair amount of fondness. Again, bittersweet, but it was a good day. um and you know, I said, well, you're going have to help me name the bees mom. And she said, yes, I guess I will. That's a lot more.
Speaker: That is a lot of work. And now you have the work. Now you're passing on that work to all of us. That's can help you name the bees as we go onto your website and help you name the bees as part of your of your um listeners and readers as well here that that will get to do that.
Speaker: What a beautiful way of being able to tie her into the book with that title and that memory for yourself, right? To include that title as something of a very fond memory that you had, the really last visit that you had with her. Thank you for sharing that anecdote. Younger daughter on that one. The working title of the book had been Naming Bees.
Speaker: And... and she had said to me, Mom, why don't you just use her question as the title? It's perfect. It's perfect, and it leaves it it it is it it leaves you like wondering the why of why of that, and and really that could be a question all of us can ask ourselves when someone dies. It's like now who will...
Speaker: drive me to school. Who will, you know, it's like the questions, even children, when they experience the death of a parent may ask, right. Or, you know, who will. And so it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a beautiful title, a way of tying it in. So good and kudos to your whole crew there of your support system that you have, your spouse and your, and your daughters too, that have all been part of this process of, of bringing this book to life.
Speaker: Thank you. Yeah. It's interesting because it's really um unique as to how what your family unit looks like and the voice they have.
Speaker: then And then the I'm sure the praise that you give them are probably the contrast of how you were brought up a little bit, right? of that You mentioned your mom wouldn't like it necessarily give you praise, but it looks like it's a very different picture now in your own life.
Speaker: I do talk about that in the book, about how much my mother did for me that I didn't realize was a reflection of her love for me, even though she didn't show it say it in ways that I thought were showable.
Speaker: um And I did do those things with my daughters and youre you hit the nail on the head. I absolutely was far more demonstrative with them than she had been with me.
Speaker: Yeah, sometimes we just think it's it's already a given, right? it's um It's kind of, there's cultures in which I remember a teacher once telling me like that in her culture, and I just won't say it which culture she was from, just so that, again, it's not a generic, this was her own perspective.
Speaker: This is in college. that if Let's say you were in a and a bus and somebody stepped on you, they wouldn't necessarily say sorry because it was already and it it was already a an undertone of already knowing that you would be sorry if you accidentally stepped on somebody. But they wouldn't necessarily say it. It was already...
Speaker: an underlying kind of knowing. And that's sometimes how we end up doing as parent is like, we may not say enough how many times we're proud of our kids or that we love them because there's already this understanding that there is, but sometimes they do need to hear it. And so it's, um yeah, I guess, I guess it's a where like you said, we're all doing the best we have with the information we have as parents. We're all doing the best we can with the information we have now as children taking care of parents or aging parents. So
Speaker: we're just, yeah, exploring life as it comes. Indeed. One step at a time. One step at a time. Thank you. Sarah, what is the best way for people, you mentioned the two websites, and what is the best way for them to buy the book? Do you want them to go to the websites or is there other places that they could find the book?
Speaker: um The website is an awesome place to buy the book. It's also available on Amazon and through Barnes & Noble. And now we know you have the audio book as well. That's on Audible.
Speaker: It's on Audible, um iTunes and.
Speaker: Amazon. ah well I'm sorry, Amazon, Audible and Apple Music. And Apple Music. OK, perfect. Thank you so much, Sarah, as we wrap up, I want to make sure you get to share anything else that I might have not asked that you want to make sure to leave with the audience.
Speaker: Um, two things, I think i want to reiterate, you're not alone. If this is something that you're going through, you're not alone. And there are people out there who will talk to you. There are resources on my website, um, for Alzheimer's and also breast cancer.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: it's so If you're interested in a book club and, or if you're part of a book club and you're interested in doing reading Who Will Name the Bees, I'm happy to connect with book clubs and you can reach me through my website.
Speaker: And I have become increasingly aware over time, the importance of time, and even fleeting moments. And I'm extremely grateful to you and to your listeners for the time that they've spent today to do this.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you for your time as well, for not only writing the book and your memoir to pass on to others in their own journey, but also for sharing it here on the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief.
Speaker: If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way that to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
Speaker: Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me.
Speaker: And thanks once again for tuning in to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.
Speaker: you
