Through the looking glass

Dementia leaves a person not knowing what is real

Today things are a bit weird. I woke late, and heard the gentle multiple pings of the security cameras, announcing that my mum was on the move. The most recent alert was from what I call the wisteria garden - an unusual place for her to be at that time of day. But today is the first really sunny day for a week or so, and before that both of us were quite unwell with a cold. So we haven’t had much time outside, and it didn’t surprise me that she’d want to be in the garden.

Except that she was standing still, peering fixedly at nothing particular. So I sat up, took the most essential of my medication for the day - the stuff that helps my brain work better! - scrambled into a pair of shoes, squeezed through the sliding door (closing it carefully so my cat didn’t escape), and greeted my mom cheerfully. Hello – what’s happening? Oh, I have to go and see my mother and grandmother. When are you going to do that? Today, I’ve been told I have to go today.

Here is where I really struggle. My mum doesn’t sound happy about having been told that she has to go and see her mother and grandmother. On the other hand, all the advice I’ve read or been given is that I should not contradict her. I know that she has not been told any such thing. Her mother died giving birth to her more than 90 years ago. Her grandmother died most likely of heart condition before my mother was married, and she was married at 21 years of age. No one has been near her who would’ve said any such foolish thing. So do I go along with the upsetting fiction that someone has told her she needs to visit these relatives? Or do I explain that these relatives have not been alive for some seventy plus years?

I like to think that I have some skill as an actor. Some of the most joyous experiences of my life have been when I’ve had the opportunity to be someone else in a dramatic production. Now and again I’ve been a little too convincing in a role-play, so someone has assumed that the character I’ve pretended to be is really me, and they’ve taken offence. But when it comes to real life, I’m not a very convincing liar. Over the years, my lack of political prowess – or is it tact? – has got me into a LOT of trouble.

So it isn’t a big surprise that my mum is unconvinced when I try to pretend with her. When I’ve gone along with her untrue convictions in the past, there have been two negative consequences: she has sensed that she couldn’t trust what I was saying, and therefore distrusted me; and because so many of her fictions are negative, she has spiralled into greater anxiety, convinced that people are angry with her for not caring for her absent children (one died in 2011, the remaining two are adult, one is standing right in front of her, and she did not neglect any of us), her husband has left her because he’s angry with her (my father, who adored her but died of a heart attack in 1999), and the local council are insisting she leave her home (she owns her home, with no debt, and the council doesn’t have the right to do any such thing anyway).

So how do I reassure this fragile confused lady that she is loved, she has lived well, she has kept her promises, she has no enemies, and she doesn’t have to go anywhere today that she doesn’t want to?