Living Beside the Leaving
A memoir for people grieving someone who is still here, and for people rebuilding after caregiving ends.
You are taking care of someone. Or you were.
At first, the changes were small.
A misplaced purse.
A question asked twice, then a third time.
A routine she'd done for years, suddenly gone.
A moment you explained away because the alternative was too big to hold.
Then the changes got harder to explain away.
You kept showing up anyway.
You managed the calls. The appointments. The decisions nobody prepares you to make. The safety checks. The version of her you had to start grieving while she was still sitting across the table.
Nothing had officially ended.
But the grief had already started.
And when the caregiving finally did end, the quiet that came after brought its own kind of disorientation.
Inside the book
Living Beside the Leaving starts before Alzheimer's became the center of the story or was even a part of the story at all.
It follows the small changes, then the big ones. The decisions nobody prepares you to make. The strange, ongoing work of loving someone who was still here, and no longer the same person who raised you.
Diagnosis. The conversation about whether she could still drive. The day memory care stopped being a hypothetical and became a decision. Family tension that was never really about what it looked like it was about. Anger. Guilt. An exhaustion that doesn't have a name yet. And, somewhere in all of it, the moments that were still good. Still her. Still worth keeping.
Then her final days. And after them, a quiet so strange it needed its own kind of grieving.
This isn't a guidebook.
It's what caregiving actually asks of you. What grief can look like before someone dies. And what's still standing after the role is gone..
“I was already practicing goodbye.”
About Caroline Shelby
I am a grief educator, coach, and the founder of Grief Clarity Labs.
Before this work, I spent more than a decade caring for my mother as Alzheimer's took her, one piece at a time.
At the time, I did not have language for most of what I was living through.
I knew I was tired.
I knew I was scared.
I knew I loved her, past the point where love was still easy.
I did not know grief had already started.
This book came from what I could not name while I was still inside it. And from what I finally understood once the caregiving was over, and there was room to name it at last.
If this story feels close to your own, Grief Clarity Labs offers support beyond the book.
Support circles offer a place to be with others who understand.
One-on-one coaching offers private support to talk through what this specifically looks like in your life.
Speaking and workshops are available for organizations and groups who want a clearer way to talk about grief and caregiving.