I have decided to record here some of the stabbing issues that loving a person with dementia produces.
The days of excitement we are accustomed to seeing when we visit my mother have come to an end. She use to light up like a Christmas tree when we would visit, her eyes smiling with warmth, the delight in seeing me her daughter and her grandchildren could not be contained, it was genuine and flowed from her very essence.
Some things ending might be good, but this is not one of them.
I have been ignoring this one, not willing to admit it because I keep thinking it will pass and perhaps there will be a return to the way it has always been. There is a definite passing, but just like the disease which has taken so much of her from us these past years, the realization of this particular kind of passing is very difficult to witness. This one wants to cling tightly like super glue. I feel myself wrenching it away. It doesn't help when we tell ourselves, "It's okay...she is not herself...it is understandable, a product of the disease". It is yet another level of her decline, and it deeply hurts in an area that has been assigned to her alone, for her special kind of love, in a place that only she can fill. A place that she has always filled in the past.
But here is the true heart wrench ...when an aide or nurse walks in, I see that look in her eyes for them. They have become her pride and joy.
2 comments:
Ouch, oh that's so hard. Like a shifting of her affections yet you have faithfully been there for her always.
It must be hard not to take it personally, yet you know deep down it's all part of the decline. I guess you need to adjust expectations. Like a close friend observed of my father's decline in relation to my mother's life - it's a prolonged grieving. God's grace is there.
That's so sad. I don't look forward to dealing with these things with my own parents, but I know my day will come.
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