I’m in my late 30’s and feeling like I’m living in ghost town on bad days.
My grandparents passed away when I was a young kid (one I never even met), 2 of my uncles have passed away, one cousin, my brother... and... Mum has dementia.
On bad days, this is all my Mum talks about! But all of these people are dead.
In one way it’s funny and on another note it’s rather depressing to be dragged into the sad memories on a rotating manner. They aren’t exactly what I want to think about minute by minute.
Some of the conversation starts are:
“Your uncle 1 told me this”.
“Your cousin really is a good singer, she’s been performing at”.
”Your brother had to do this and reminded you that...”
”I no longer have my parents (me thinking,...no you haven’t had them for 30+ yrs).
“Your uncle 2 and I decided that it’s”
I know with dementia it’s easier to just go along with it all but why do they all have to be dead people :( it makes me feel like I’m living with ghosts and sometimes even freaky to be quite honest.
Sometimes I think,.. maybe they are really talking to her as angels, prepping her for the world beyond ours.... who’s to really know. Nonetheless they definitely push my emotional buttons.
I try distract but often it just switches to the next dead person.
My brother, cousin and both my uncles were all sudden departures and I guess Mum talking about them partly magnifies also the fact that I am all alone in this,..
Sometimes I will flip and yell at Mum and say “THEY ARE ALL DEAD, end of conversation”. And this is because the talk makes me sad, depressed and lonely. I feel awful about that and it then makes her sad but sometimes if I don’t,.. she will keep pestering me like “Your brother asked you to do this, why haven’t you done it yet” Etc,...
Anyhow, this is on the bad days,.. I guess this is yet another phase to go through,....
My mother is 95 (living in Memory Care) with advanced dementia & ALL she talks about is the dead relatives, except for her husband (my father) of 68 years who's also passed but who she NEVER mentions, oddly enough! It's her mama and her papa and her sisters & brothers that she talks about continuously! She calls my husband Angelo who's actually her sister's late husband who died in the early 90's! At first I thought like you did; that maybe she was really talking to the spirits of these deceased siblings and parents in preparation for her OWN passing, but now I've changed my mind. She's been doing this for more than 6 months now so the 'prep' time should be long gone; if she was getting ready to pass away, she'd have done so by now! I think she's just gone back in time to when they were all younger and still interacting, I guess. Who knows? It just stresses me out to keep coming up with on-the-spot stories about WHERE they are, what they're doing and why they are not calling her or going to see her? That is the sad part, really; that she feels abandoned by family members who are DEAD, not ignoring her!
I guess this is another phase to go through, you're right, but who knows what is coming next? God give us & them the strength to endure it, until He takes them Home to be at eternal peace. That's my prayer.
I don't know that there's any solution–OP might just have to make the best of it while it lasts (and we all know it won't last forever)–but this would be hard for anyone.
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I'd just go right along with her conversations -- it's all you really can do -- so I'd ask her what Dan was up to, or how Suzi looked today. She had all kinds of things to say, and it made her happy to talk about them. I even kept a journal of stories she told about Dan, the imaginary husband. They were real whoppers!
That's really what you should try to do. Just go with her reality. I realize these are all people you've lost, too, and it is sad. I adored those two cousins as well, but not telling Mom they were gone kept them alive for me, too.
As others have said, try to adopt a more patient attitude with her. She can't help it, and I'm sure you don't want to hurt her, too.
You'll have a more complete family history, perhaps a better sense of belonging to them and perhaps not feeling as alone in all of this.
Oh and the yelling part-that is hard not to do. I did yell a few months ago, and things escalated to the point where I thought I'd have to get the cops to calm down my husband with early dementia.
When are your days off/respite care?
And I'm sure you already know that yelling at her that they are all dead is just plain cruel, if you can't handle your roll in all this it's time to start implementing your Plan B. (You do have a Plan B I hope?)
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