I currently visit my mam twice a week and I look forward to it, but lately I'm wishing I could go more. I feel twice a week isn't enough even though my brother goes once a week. Especially today when I left she was teary and it tears me up inside. I just want to pick her up and bring her home with me which I know is unrealistic and I work full time. I wish I could give up work to devote more time to her but then I wouldn't have the money for the fares. She has dementia and I know she is in the right place. It's not a care home as such, it's a little bungalow with 5 residents. Lovely carers but I guess I want to be with her because she knows me the most and she lights up when she sees me. I feel sad when I leave her and it affects me for ages afterwards. How do I deal better with my emotions?
My sister and brother live near and she had spent last weekend with them, and with another brother in from out of town to visit her. And aside from the weekend my sister visits frequently. Yet she loses track of these visits, and feels sad and lonely. We have started writing down the visits on a calender she has, so she can look at it and see who has been there. But she forgets to look so I don't know that it does any good.
In the meantime she isn't leaving her AL apartment to make connections with the people there, so she is feeling isolated.
My sister and I are struggling with this. Once thing that has helped my sister is remembering a conversation she had with Mom a few years ago. They were discussing raising children, and my Mom stated that she felt it wasn't the parent's job to make their children happy. It was their job to make sure the children were loved and safe and cared for. This was in response to a common friend who was twisting herself into knots to make her child happy.
So we are trying to apply Mom's philosophy on child-rearing (which resulted in 6 well-adjusted happy adults) to our dealings with Mom. It is our job to make sure she is loved and safe and cared for. We can't make her happy - and in fact since she developed dementia she just plain isn't happy much of the time because her life is not what she wants it to be.
I am trying to learn to live with that, but it is hard. I do know the Mom of 5 years ago wouldn't want me to turn my life upside down to keep her company or try to make her happy.
Sigh, all those words and it still is so hard.
Please don't feel guilty that you can't visit you Mom more often, chances are your Mom no longer has a sense of time.
When my own Mom was in a care facility, she also use to light up when she saw me and would call me by name. Yes, that felt good that she still recognized me, until one day when she hadn't seen me yet, she was lighting up and calling one of the Aides by my name. It was then that I realized she didn't really know who I was :(