Perspective

I have a dear friend that has Alzheimer's disease. I know her children well. I visit her in the nursing home occasionally and it is good for perspective. In quiet confidence she assures me that her children are stealing from her. I nod with understanding. It is not a nod of agreement, but of understanding. I understand how her children feel in being falsely maligned. She sometimes becomes fixated on wanting a specific thing that she can't have. It is, of course, the fault of someone at the home who is just not being kind to her. I nod in understanding. I feel for the workers at the home that take the abuse daily from her tongue. One of the most interesting things about this dear lady is that she can be so lucid at times that no one, not workers or guests or friends would think she has a problem. I nod in understanding. How easily the unaware can be sucked into her nonexistent reality.

I always come home from seeing her just a little more upbeat in my attitude toward Dad. He is not alone. Nor am I. As much as it often seems that he is zeroing in on me for his attacks, he is not. He just simply has no clue what it going on. I can see it better after seeing it from outside myself.

The upside lately is that he is getting worse. Upside?? Well, he is forgetting faster. That means that I can finally deflect an idea and not have it bite me thirty seconds later. Some issues to be sure don't go away. Keeping him from his own money still stays in his mind for more than 30 seconds, but other things don't. He brought up a recurring issue the other day and I deflected it for something else. When the something else was done he didn't get back to it. Hurray!!! That is becoming more common. It is sad for him, but I don't think he was necessarily happy always arguing about things either. He would get so upset. Now he doesn't. To me that is a good thing for him since they are all issues that nothing could be done about anyway. He lived in constant frustration. Now he forgets most of them and goes more merrily on his way. It is more indicative that his latter stages of disease are in onset, but the sunshine in this descent is that he is finally happier.