Growing up, my mom and I didn’t always have the best relationship. But as she and I both grew older, we reconnected when I became her caregiver. My mom was in a long-term care home in Calgary while I lived in Saskatchewan and then British Columbia, and her needs grew significantly as she aged. For the past four years, I would fly to Calgary to see her for about four days a month. This put a significant strain on me physically and emotionally, but I loved the time I spent with her.

I was lucky in my role as a professor that my supervisors and colleagues were understanding of the time I needed to spend with my mom. But everything got worse when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the isolation made her life much less bearable and my ability to care for her more challenging. There were times when I would arrive at her long-term care home for my monthly visit, but the unpredictable nature of the restrictions required I return home. The isolation led to a significant decline in my mom’s health. She became anxious when I was unable to visit her, and toward the end of her life, she was calling me more than 10 times a day. I felt compelled to answer all of her calls, which took an emotional toll on me.

I’m thankful I was able to spend that time with her, especially during her final decline and into her death. After she died, things did not go back to normal for me. The terminal exhaustion I felt caused me to pull back on everything that I was involved in. It took me months to process what had happened over the prior 15 years, the impact of COVID-19 on our lives, and the last very intense months. That said, I feel blessed that mom had such wonderful caregivers in all the long-term care homes she resided in and I was fortunate to have been able to support her through her final years of life.