We were lucky to catch up with Kate Hanley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kate, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

Breakfast Memories A Dementia Love Story is a story of the journey of caring for my Mom during her last 3 years of life.

I share my journey through the lens of my own pain watching my parents’ physical and mental health decline as I cared for my mom during the wildly uncharted, lonely and unstable waters of dementia, while also caring for my dad, during his last year of very poor health.

After his passing, I dug deeply into my parents love and history, I discovered a unique love language that my parents shared that I didn’t see as a child while I was growing up. This language was unlocked by my discovery of mounds of daily poetry written on breakfast morning paper napkins, from my father to my mom. It was not too long after this discovery that I witnessed the powerful yet invisible strength of the memories held in my mom’s soul. It was the discovery of these sonnets that was the defining moment of my belief that having someone that loves you matters to our happiness in life. In all ways, spiritually, physically and mentally.

My dad’s love proved itself immortal. Witnessing my mom’s memory surge through dementia in her final days of life provides my readers who are caregivers of a person living with dementia, a reason to believe that love lives on eternally, never to be forgotten.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My memoir, Breakfast Memories A Dementia Love Story was published in 2019 and shares my journey of caring for my mom during her last three years of life as dementia silently stole her beautiful mind. The book is written through the lens of my own pain watching her physical and mental health decline as I took on the role of caregiver with no experience and no guidebook. Yet I learned numerous life lessons during this experience. One of the most profound being that even in the darkest times of despair, there is reason to hope and remember that love is never forgotten.
As my story Breakfast Memories A Dementia Love Story unfolds, along the progression of my mom’s dementia, I discovered a cache of daily love devotionals my dad had penned to my mother every
morning on a paper napkin. The power of his love in these heartfelt sonnets proved the strength of the memories held in my mom’s soul, as she searched for the sonnets during the final days of her life.

My journey may be very similar to what many caregivers experience; frustration, exhaustion, loneliness and despair, as they helplessly watch dementia steal the mind of someone they love.
Reframing the Conversation on Dementia Care, published in 2020, is offered as a guidebook on navigating through the journey as a caregiver for a loved one with dementia. It is a compilation of my journals, notes, and all the knowledge I gained while caring for my mom. My hope is that it will help all those in a similar journey more successfully navigate communications with family, physicians, and other caregivers.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

There are huge lessons I learned through the whole journey of caring for my parents, especially my mom. I didn’t apply for the position of caring for my mom, yet I must have been an applicant all of my life because of how deeply I loved her. The truth is, I was unequipped for the devastating blow that dementia took, not just on my beautiful mom, but on all of my siblings and me. If I could go back to the years of caring for them both, I would encourage myself to accept my imperfections.

There was loss beyond the loss of my mother. There was sibling loss and damage to treasured relationships. I believe that almost all this pain could have been avoided and I now know what I should have done. If I could go back and change things I would never send or receive texts or emails that related to mom’s needs and her care. I realize now, 8 years after her passing, that these one-way communications caused misunderstandings, and unnecessary and unintentional pain to those that I love so dearly, and more importantly, that she loved so dearly. I should have, we should have, all of us, just picked up the phone and talked through the many daily struggles that were happening to mom, and naturally extended to her main caregiver, me.

My hope is that the information in my guidebook and in my memoir will help caregivers navigate the uncharted path that is the journey of caring for a loved one with dementia.

My hope is that all caregivers accept their imperfections as they struggle to be the perfect caregiver for a loved one. My hope is that moments of calm serenity and grace in the midst of everything that is not, can be found.
I pray that that even in the darkest times of despair, caregivers will find a reason to believe that love is never forgotten.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Hospice taught me how to administer morphine to reduce the excruciating pain of dying. I never thought I could be strong enough to position the morphine syringe in the back of dad’s left cheek pocket every four hours. Mom would watch me, and I wondered if she knew that the man in the bed was dying and that I was helping him in his passage by giving him narcotics to ease the pain of death. I remember looking at her when I would open his lower lip with my left hand, holding the morphine drop in my stronger right hand. The drops weighed less than an ounce, but the weight of what I was doing, helping Dad die, took every ounce of my spirit and physical strength.
Yet amidst my overwhelming dizziness with the reality of what I was doing, there was something tugging at me, telling me that I had been shown this type of strength a long time ago.
I jolted with the flashback. I was doing what I had learned by her example – I was doing what had to be done.

~~~
The boys were little, about three and five when her best friend, her sister Margaret, had become very ill.
“It’s Mom.” I listened to her voice on my answering machine as the boys threw their empty lunchboxes from kindergarten and preschool onto the kitchen counter. She sounded awful. “Aunt Margaret called and asked me to come down and stay with her a bit. She’s not feeling well. Daddy will be home alone for a couple of days. Can you please check in on him?”
She was on the plane to her sister Margaret’s the next morning.
When she arrived at Margaret’s Jackson Heights apartment, the door to the apartment was unlocked, as if Margaret was expecting her. Mom walked in, and gently yelled out, “Hello, Margaret,” waiting to be greeted with her sister’s embrace. Instead she found Margaret on the white-and-black tiled bathroom floor nearly unconscious. Mom called for an ambulance, rode with Margaret to the hospital, was met by her other loving sister, Catherine, and four days later Catherine and Mom stood together as Mom signed the papers to release Margaret from life-support. Margaret had succumbed to pancreatic cancer, which she had kept a secret from her sisters.
At that time, I remember thinking that the reality of what Mom had to do and the responsibility of doing what her sister requested of her must have been overwhelming, yet, in the hour of need, she’d had the strength to do what had to be done.
A staunch Irish Catholic woman, Mom helped Margaret with the faith that she would journey on to perpetual life, a journey in which Mom and Margaret both devotedly believed.
It was my turn now, and “overwhelming” didn’t even touch the depth of my fear or anxiety, yet I was doing what Mom had done herself.
I allowed myself to assist Dad in his perpetual journey, a journey in which he and I both devotedly believed, and I quickly learned that there was one particular character strength that I needed to find within me…being able to do what has to be done.
~~~

Contact Info:

• Website: www.breakfastmemories.com