The Care and Feeding of a Stubborn Old Woman
A Dispatch from the dementia frontlines. (10X100: Day Seven)
My mother-in-law thinks I want to make her live in a nursing home.
She calls it being ‘put away.’
Dementia causes her to be paranoid. I hear her whispering to her husband that he has to be nice to me, or else I’ll put them away. I see it in her face if I’m every anything less than wildly excited about life.
Her husband has Alzheimer’s. His dementia has mellowed him. He pats her shoulder and calls her his sweetheart and tells her that they just won’t go. That’s it.
It’s always me she’s worried about. I think it’s easier for her to project the fear on me, instead of on my husband, who is her only son.
I feel for her. I really do. Losing your faculties has to be terrifying. I wish there was some way for me to soothe her fears on this particular thing. I tell her that no one wants to put her away.
Of course, no one wants to.
But I can’t tell her that no one ever will. Because I don’t know. And I don’t want to lie.
There might come a point where she and her husband aren’t safe at home anymore. That’s the stark reality of life in my family right now.
