I’m not sure if I’m asking for suggestions or if I’m just venting. My 95 yr old father is in memory care with dementia/Alzheimers. Mom passed a year ago. I visit him at least 6days a week when I’m in town and have just recently given myself permission to leave guilt at home when my husband and I take vacations. Dad can be just fine one day and then cry and feel sorry for himself the next. I know he is lonely and still missing mom but his continual requests to move (he doesn’t know where he would go and seems to be stuck on the ranch he grew up on and sold in 1991) and his ideation concerning asking a previous resident assistant who is in her early 40’s to marry him, are taking their toll on me. Is there anything I can do to help him adjust and find some contentment with his life as it is? Thanks for being there to listen.
All the best
Meds can't fix everything, but when it appeared that my mom was stuck in and endless "pity party" it turned out that anxiety was the culprit. Meds helped her get back to a calm baseline.
You love your daughter and want to share in her happiness: let yourself! Be happy that you have a wonderful daughter and a soon-to-be in-law! Let go of your guilt! 👍 You can do it!
I answered each time in a short sentence. I knew she’d ask again.
Other days, she is somewhat more relaxed and open to enjoying our visits, and can enter a discussion with reasonably plausible give and take. I sometimes bring an item familiar to her from her past, perhaps a piece of jewelry or dinnerware from home or a scarf or purse she’d gifted me, and on a good day, she and I can have a conversation of 5 or 6 sentence exchanges.
On “good” days, I “feed” her clues/hints to attempt to allow her to access something she may, or may not, be able to recall. Sometimes in the moment, this works, sometimes not.
My expectations are ALWAYS based on giving her a response of something comfortable and positive IN THE MOMENT. I never expect her to recall, or benefit from, the “conversations” in which we take part. SHE IS JUST NOT AT THAT LEVEL OF THOUGHT NOW.
What you are experiencing with your dad is probably similar. My LOL has benefited a great deal from receiving the services of a very good geriatric psychiatric counselor, who has prescribed and tweaked medications to access LO’s “best”. But no services or medications or hopes can restore what she’s lost.
I think your expectations for your dad may come, at least in part, from your own sorrow about losing him to this tragic disease. It is great that you have been able to separate from the guilt you feel when leaving him while taking well deserved vacations. But “loneliness”, requests to “move”, “feeling sorry for himself”? These are all very likely mental abstractions that are part of his present shadow world thoughts, not the formed, detailed thoughts your sense of empathy may be considering them.
I have come to realize that when I visit and LO is having a good day, and also when I visit and she’s having a difficult day, I leave the facility with tears in my eyes from missing her as she used to be. However I try to change that, my head always knows the truth, but my heart won’t give up wanting it to be different.
It isn’t your “failure” that you can’t help him feel better. It’s the ravages of a disease without a cure. It won’t hurt him if you acknowledge to yourself that you are doing what you can do, and that loving him doesn’t mean fixing him.
Go as often as you can do so COMFORTABLY, but trust yourself to know when YOU need a vacation from the visits, too. You will most likely be answering the same questions, in the same way, when you return.