I am lucky enough to still have my grandmother; however, within the last 6 months her dementia has worsened to the point that it has become traumatic for me to talk with her. I live several states away from her and I see her once or twice a year. I used to call her once a month, but lately I find it extremely difficult to find the nerve to call her. I used to be very close with Grandma and she is/was a major influence on my life. I spent every summer of my childhood on her farm. There's so much of her that is a part of me – including my involvement in animal rescue and music. I am sure many of you know the devastation of a loved one loosing memory of your relationship. Grandma sometimes remembers me. When she doesn’t, I pretend like I’m an old friend and the conversation ends quickly and it’s sad, but fine. However, when she does remember me, she gets angry and accusatory. Example, she gave me some of her baking utensils, several boxes of sheet music, a guitar, and a camera - something she gave me as a gift she knew her favorite items were going somewhere they’d be used. Now she accuses me of stealing them. She complained to me about my father refusing to shoot the neighbor’s cat – I agreed with my father, of course – so she called me “one of the people that believes animals have feelings.” This coming from the woman who taught me about animal caretaking (she had a farm). To top that off, she is always talking about death from the perspective of some animal her former partner or father killed in some rather brutal way. To me, it sounds like trauma dumping – these are parts of her life that really bothered her. Anyways, I know I need to call her more often. It doesn’t help that my job + family life are extremely stressful. I keep giving myself the excuse that I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with this, but I know avoiding calling is wrong and I will regret my lack of action after she is gone. Does anyone have advice on how to either steer the conversation in another direction when she gets angry or when it goes off on some gruesome animal death story? Or advice on not allowing this to impact me so much? I’m feeling a tremendous amount of guilt for not calling her.
- How's the weather out there today? It rained here earlier and now a nice breeze.
- Did I tell you my job is going great?
- I need to get to work, I'll talk to you later.
- Somebody's at the door...I gotta go!
They aren't the same person you knew. Sorry.
You are now making calls to a failing, disoriented shadow who needs your love and kindness, if you can feel brave and strong enough to offer them.
And if you can’t, you must be brave and strong enough to stretch the time between the phone visits or make them at shorter intervals followed by longer breaks, or whatever rhythm you can develop for yourself.
And you can feel the right to change up your schedule when you need to.
All you can do is tune it out when she start telling you these things. If you are on the phone simply set it down until she's done talking then try to redirect the conversation to another topic.
Some people with dementia relive child sex abuse too. Tragic and unfortunate but it is what it is.
This is what my MIL is doing to her kids when they have the day with her. (In home Hospice, not working out well, but, not my monkey--so)
MIL talks incessantly about the kids' father, whom she hated with a grand passion and DIVORCED 36 years ago. She cannot spend 3 hrs with anyone of them without their 'horrible father' coming up as a topic.
They also realize it's partly the disease and partly that she cannot let go of any slight or hurt. There's nothing they can do--although I know they try.
At least you can control how much time you spend talking to Gma, and you DO have fond memories of her. Take that as the blessing it is and just accept what cannot be changed.
JoAnn's advice about just telling gma you're sorry, you didn't mean to keep--whatever--and by the time you speak or see her again, she'll lkely have forgotten what it was that went missing.