Lying

I’m still pondering the question of truth as it pertains to my mother’s perplexing mix of the real and the imagined.  Earlier this fall I had come to the conclusion that “going along” with a particular fantasy made the most sense.  But that was when she didn’t have much grounding, when her mind appeared to be more amorphous.

Now she exhibits a greater understanding of her situation.  She knows she needs to get stronger.  She has a basic, though sometimes slippery, sense that she no longer owns a house in NC.  She has referenced the fact that my father is dead.  She connects names to the faces that surround her and she has made friends.

This makes lying to her seem like more of a problem.

So we tell the truth more often.

“Where is my mother?” she asks. 

Your mother is no longer living.

“Are you sure?

Yes.

“Then why did Becka tell me she was upstairs?”

You imagined she said that.

“So I guess this is just a part of my dementia…”

I had heard that the worst phase for someone who is experiencing diminished capacity is when the individual is aware of the problem.  I thought she had managed to avoid this stage.

Complaining

My sweet cousin and her mother recently drove to town to visit my mother.  As we were sitting down to lunch, they inquired about my new job.  I said that it is “mostly good,” and didn’t offer details.  My mother seemed happy to hear this response and commented to that effect.  I guess that after ten years of complaints about my previous job, everybody is pleased to hear me put a positive spin on things.

I always thought I was being honest when I shared my concerns.  I thought I was offering both sides—what I liked and what I struggled with.  But maybe I erred on the negative side.

My grousing to my mother was partially designed to keep her at bay.  I’m overworked.  I only have time for short visits.  I can’t to this or that.  You don’t understand my crazy life.  She and I fell into conversational habits and patterns.  She would rant about certain individuals that, in her mind, repeatedly failed to behave properly.  And I would talk about various and sundry demands on my time.  We were probably both bored but seemed to locate few options that spared us from this regular litany.

 

Now we run a different course.  I try to be more entertaining.  She tries to understand things.  She routinely asks me why she no longer has a house.  At least once a week she tells me she needs a car, and once recently, suggested we run out and buy one.  A used one. 

But she rarely complains to me.  She told my Aunt Linda that she was “bereft” at the loss of her home and possessions, but she has not shared this with me.  The nurses tell me that she scolds her roommate, who is very loud and very bossy.  Very.  But my mother tells me “I like her enough.”  She appears to feel that my husband and I needn’t be burdened by her trials and tribulations.

It is strange. This woman, who has spent her life time judging others and applying honed critical skills, is now described by those her tend her as “sweet.”

 

I can’t quite get used to it.  It doesn’t fit my picture of her at all.

But even as I resist, I’m learning.  

Elopement

I had a meeting with my mother’s care team yesterday.  It started with the administrator shaking his head and repeatedly muttering her name.  Thing is, up until the day before, I thought she was doing so much better that we would be having an entirely different conversation.  I was preparing to look into assisted living options for her.  I thought she might be moving towards more independence.

I was wrong.

She is stronger.  She can help lift herself from the bed to her wheelchair or from her chair onto the toilet seat or into a car seat.  She can raise her feet several inches off the floor, push the wheels of her chair with her skinny arms and knotty hands and easily maneuver the hallways.  She rolls with ease and speed.

But it turns out that this newfound ability is a mixed blessing.

It makes her harder to catch.

The gain in clarity my mother has made in the past month seems to dissolve as she tires and the daylight begins to disappear.  This relatively common behavior for individuals with dementia is called “sun-downing.”  My mother’s late day confusion has caused her to believe that she could leave the facility on her own and “catch a ride” downtown to her sister’s office.  And then her sister would give her a ride “home.”  There is more than one problem with this idea, but the primary flaw lies in the fact that her sister lives 125 miles away.  Yet, thinking it was a fine plan, she attempted to put it into action.  And she made it as far as the parking lot.  Twice.  Then they called me.  She was mad and didn’t understand why she was being forced to return.  So they put her on a locked ward for the night.

Nursing home workers call this behavior “elopement.”

Despite the fact that most of us connect this term to secretly running away with the intention of getting married, the first definition listed under “elope” in Merriam-Webster is:  to slip away, to escape.  And that is precisely what she tried to do.

When we visited the next day, my mother was confused about the night she spent on the second floor.  She thought she had been somewhere else altogether, though she recognized a similarity in the food and crockery.  She shared with me that perhaps this new place was run by the same people, and maybe even had the same chef.

We tried to reason with her but she didn’t quite grasp our various arguments, especially the one about not wanting her to get disoriented.  Her response: “How could anyone get lost in Greenwood?” (Greenwood is a small town in SC in which she grew up, but it is nowhere near her current home.)

Yesterday she also inquired about her mother, wondering where she had gone and why it was taking so long for her to reappear.  My grandmother died in the early 1990s and was buried on a hot summer day by a preacher she had never known and who, during the graveside service, mispronounced her name with excruciating regularity.  But these facts no longer register in my mother’s mind. 

Elopement.  It sounds better than it really is.