Most weeks on Total Michigan, Cliff DuVernois sits down with dreamers and doers who are making our state brighter.

This week, the spotlight turns inward.

In this deeply personal year-in-review episode, Cliff reflects on 2025—a year defined by creative growth, unexpected limitations, and the heavy, sacred work of caregiving. As his mother’s dementia progressed, the life he had carefully built was slowly reshaped by responsibility, sacrifice, and hard decisions no one prepares you for.

What emerged from that pressure wasn’t the end of Total Michigan, but a clearer purpose, stronger storytelling, and a deeper understanding of what it means to slow down, let go, and trust God with what you cannot control.

This is a story about love, loss, resilience, and learning when to stop being the caregiver—and start being the son.

[00:00:23] Cliff DuVernois: Today is different. There's no guest, no interview, no spotlight on someone else.[00:00:30]

[00:00:48] Cliff DuVernois: Would you sacrifice everything that you built to care for someone else. Would you give up your life or your dreams to care for someone you love when death is the [00:01:00] only certain outcome for them?

[00:01:07] Cliff DuVernois: Like most years, 2025 started with optimism.

[00:01:33] Cliff DuVernois: I felt alive, useful, even hopeful. But there's a flip side to this, a flip side. My friends know about my family. It's something I've largely kept from you, the audience. I'm also a caregiver for my mother, and in 2025 she got worse. To understand this, let's go back in time. New Year's eve of 2020 and [00:02:00] my dad passed away.

[00:02:10] Cliff DuVernois: My mom started acting a bit suspicious after being a caregiver for my dad. I contemplated the worst.

[00:02:18] Cliff DuVernois: Her doctor said to me,

[00:02:22] Cliff DuVernois: My mom, at that time, she was 85, almost blind, and now having dementia.

[00:02:49] Cliff DuVernois: If you have a thousand pieces, would you really notice if one was missing? But over time it becomes noticeable. My heart sank. I didn't want to do this again. [00:03:00] It was hard enough for my dad, but now to have to do it with my mom. As the car cruised down the road, I realized in the moment that I would have to be a caregiver once again.

[00:03:38] Cliff DuVernois: For some reason, God has laid this on our shoulders.

[00:04:07] Cliff DuVernois: I could leave my mom by herself. She could still prepare her own meals, watch television, call people on her phone. I was never gone for more than a couple of days. I would call and check on her when I was on the road. Sometimes she would stay with relatives, but during the years, I knew I was living on borrowed time because there were little hints along the way that the disease [00:04:30] was progressing.

[00:04:59] Cliff DuVernois: You just [00:05:00] asked me that question five minutes ago. I did. She would reply, total Michigan switched instead of being something that I love to do. I used it as a way to escape the house. It gave me a reason to leave, to get away, to say what was left of my sanity, to give myself a break. And this continued until one day after completing a few interviews, I returned home, pulled into the driveway.

[00:05:41] Cliff DuVernois: Clifford!

[00:05:51] Cliff DuVernois: Why is mom's bedroom door closed? She never closes that door. I open it. Mom stands in the closet. Her arms in front of her, [00:06:00] her hands pushed, closed back and forth. It was getting dark, but I could still see that her eyes were wide open and her mouth was quivering.

[00:06:11] Cliff DuVernois: At first I was confused. What was she doing?

[00:06:19] Cliff DuVernois: Please help me. Tears start falling down her cheeks. I'm lost. I don't know where I am.

[00:06:35] Cliff DuVernois: As she climbs inside, she repeats over and over. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

[00:06:46] Cliff DuVernois: I have no idea how long she was lost in her closet. Was it five minutes? An hour. She couldn't call anyone for help because she didn't have her phone. I said a quick prayer that day, thanking God that I wasn't gone for the night.[00:07:00]

[00:07:25] Cliff DuVernois: My radius was now one hour drive in the morning, [00:07:30] do the interview, come back in the afternoon. That's when I had to make the hardest decision. I could no longer do two or three interviews in a day. I could only do one, which meant that I was gonna be traveling every week now instead of once a month. On top of that, I had to be home by seven o'clock every single day because that's when mom would start getting ready for bed.

[00:08:15] Cliff DuVernois: During that time, sundowners appeared earlier and earlier in the day, 7:00 PM became 6:00 PM and then it was five, then four, then eventually three. Not only did my [00:08:30] evenings get shorter, but so did my mornings. I had to wake mom up. I had to help her get dressed, fix her breakfast, prepare her medications, make sure she took her medications, make sure she could find her lunch in the fridge, and all told I couldn't get on the road until after nine o'clock every morning before I had a window of seven to eight hours to do an interview.

[00:09:04] Cliff DuVernois: What was I going to do? Was I gonna give up total Michigan, cancel the show, no longer be on the radio to have this podcast? I will admit that when you're a caregiver, there's a lot of resentment, a lot of frustration.

[00:09:42] Cliff DuVernois: My only energy, just get through the day, just make sure that she got through the day. One afternoon I was driving back from Lansing alone in my thoughts. Somewhere between the highway signs and the miles disappearing under my tires, a sentence cut through the noise. If I could only do [00:10:00] one interview, then it had to be better, not rushed, not squeezed in between obligations, but just better spend more time with each guest, more time shooting video.

[00:10:37] Cliff DuVernois: The next interview was with the Artisan Urban Bistro in Saginaw, a cute, delicious little restaurant. Every Wednesday, the owner, Lonnie, does Grateful Pasta. 10% of the night's proceeds go to a local nonprofit. Lonnie is the very definition of why I do total Michigan, but she could only do the interview at three in the [00:11:00] afternoon, the very hour I needed to be home.

[00:11:23] Cliff DuVernois: Lonnie came outside to meet us, took my mom by the arm and guided her into the restaurant. As I set up my [00:11:30] gear, Lonnie sat right next to my mom talking to her, holding her hand, telling her stories, being the absolute sweetheart that she is. Lonnie didn't treat my mom like a burden. She treated her like she mattered.

[00:11:49] Cliff DuVernois: with the pressure off. We did the interview. I captured a lot of great video footage. I interviewed her head chef, then prepared dishes right in front of me, [00:12:00] all of which I got on video. I also got video of people enjoying themselves, drinking wine, laughing. It was great with having to be home by three every day.

[00:12:36] Cliff DuVernois: From somewhere in the back of my head, this voice says, well then do it. That's when I saw it. I sprang from the couch, sat down from my Mac, and I started creating an entirely different style of video for the total Michigan YouTube channel. Heavily influenced by Bourdain, adding into things that I wanted to showcase.

[00:13:27] Cliff DuVernois: Now I was getting thousands of views [00:13:30] every week. I was blown away. People were emailing me, texting me, telling me how much they loved the videos, and their full interview Total Michigan was moving.

[00:13:52] Cliff DuVernois: But I was wrong. Because the decision I was about to face would take something from me I didn't know how to give up.

[00:14:02] Cliff DuVernois: When we come back, I'll share the gut-wrenching summer and the events that unfolded.

[00:14:08] Cliff DuVernois: Hello everyone. Welcome back to Total Michigan, where we share the stories of the dreamers and doers who are making our communities brighter every single day. I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois. Before the break, I shared with you the new format in telling stories and how I was meeting with success. The interview that I did with Diane Keenan from the East Side Soup Kitchen, it [00:14:30] broke 9,000 views.

[00:14:53] Cliff DuVernois: I was on cloud nine sharing her story was having such a positive impact. I literally felt [00:15:00] like I could do no wrong until one weekend in mid-June. For reasons I don't understand, I didn't get any sleep for four days. Straight mom with her dementia kept waking me up every hour asking if it was time to get up.

[00:15:43] Cliff DuVernois: Instead, I had to call an ambulance, but that would only last for so long. At some point, I feared that the paramedic would tell me that they could no longer prioritize coming to our house. So when she fell for the third time that weekend, I asked the paramedics to take her to the hospital. [00:16:00] I simply didn't know what else to do.

[00:16:21] Doctor: At some point, the doctor said to me, Dementia affects everyone differently. You might have to accept the fact that she's losing her ability to walk.

[00:16:37] Cliff DuVernois: She would always be getting up, trying to walk around, and then she would just fall again. I tried to envision picking her up and putting her on the toilet or getting her into the shower. These are things that I just could not do. The ER admitted her to the hospital again. Another team of doctors tried to figure out the mystery.

[00:17:17] Cliff DuVernois: One day I stopped by her room. Two therapists were in there trying to get her up and on her feet. Both of them were struggling. If it was taking two strong people to handle her, how [00:17:30] was I gonna do that all by myself? At some point, she would have to leave the hospital. They would discharge her, and what then?

[00:17:58] Cliff DuVernois: The doctor told me that they were gonna [00:18:00] send her to a rehab clinic in Saginaw, and she might be there for 30 days. For me, I had a decision to make, not about where mom would go next. I was deciding whether I could keep her safe. 30 days did buy me some time, I felt like I could breathe again. I had now 30 days to figure this out.

[00:18:42] Cliff DuVernois: Will you talk to me? I shoved my tears down my throat and headed into mom's room. I remember thinking, I didn't want that for her. To my surprise, her room was packed with people, an entire team of doctors and nurses and physical therapists. Everybody had laptops and [00:19:00] iPads, and they were all talking about mom's condition.

[00:19:30] Cliff DuVernois: Dare I say it, she was actually thriving.

[00:19:45] Cliff DuVernois: I wasn't the only one that was watching over her. One day I went grocery shopping as I picked out some bananas. My phone buzzed. I glanced down, and it was the facility calling my gut tightened. Oh no, there's something [00:20:00] wrong. The nurse at the other end said, just let you know that your mom fell this morning.

[00:20:27] Cliff DuVernois: We're just calling to let you know that she fell. You [00:20:30] don't have to do anything. We got her. In that moment, a thought hit me. If mom was gonna fall and break something, then she was in the best place for that to happen. Surrounded by nurses and doctors.

[00:20:48] Cliff DuVernois: I went back to getting my groceries. I still wanted to drive to that facility, but I forced myself to finish shopping, go home and actually eat something.

[00:21:17] Cliff DuVernois: But maybe God wouldn't, maybe that help wouldn't come and I would be all on my own.

[00:21:38] Cliff DuVernois: Mom doesn't make enough money to actually pay somebody. I could leave them and go and work, but I needed to be home and it was starting to become this round robin thing, like a chicken and the egg only. I didn't have a chicken, nor did I have an egg.

[00:22:17] Cliff DuVernois: One day, I left mom at the facility and I came home.

[00:22:38] Cliff DuVernois: How would I even function? How would we even survive?

[00:22:52] Cliff DuVernois: I then ripped open the letter and the word stared me in the face.

[00:22:59] Cliff DuVernois: [00:23:00] I sat down at the kitchen table and just stared at the letter.

[00:23:14] Cliff DuVernois: Just like with the hospital, I was at that facility every single day. I never wanted mom to feel like she was abandoned or forgotten.

[00:23:40] Cliff DuVernois: I've been playing caregiver for so long, I didn't know how to do anything else. And I realized I was still trying to be her caregiver.

[00:24:09] Cliff DuVernois: Yet when I slowed down to care for my mother, this opened up opportunities that I would've just run right by crafting better stories, both for audio and video for Total Michigan.

[00:24:34] Cliff DuVernois: When I look ahead, Total Michigan is top of mind dreaming of what could be envisioning what the future holds and where I could take this, and how many more people I could get these stories in front of. I realize that I'm only limited by my imagination.

[00:24:56] Cliff DuVernois: Believe it or not, there's a book waiting to be published. [00:25:00] I already wrote it a book about the incredible people of Michigan and how they're influencing me to get better at video. I now see the show expanding on television with more sponsors. I can hire people to help me turn my vision into a reality. But no matter how much I dream, I always take time to visit with mom.

[00:25:30] Cliff DuVernois: I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not her caregiver anymore. I can now be her son, the son. She needs to be with her in this chapter of her life.

[00:25:53] Cliff DuVernois: Have a wonderful New Year.