Hi,
I'm sorry to hear your mum has dementia. Mine does too; it's an awful condition.
No disrespect intended, but I hate the term "dementia victim".
The Alzheimer's Society teaches that some people live with dementia - and with a change in attitudes and the help of those around them, they can even live well with dementia.
Yes, of course it's a rotten condition, but the word "victim" tends to invoke pity for the person which may, in turn, lead to a difference in the way we treat them. Someone with dementia is still the same person they always were, it's just that you may have to look hard to find it; it may get hidden as the illness progresses. My mum, for example, can barely speak and I'm certain doesn't know who I am - yet she can still give me the same "look" as she did when I was a child. In her head, she is doubtless the same person as she was back then and may even think she is the same age - it's only us, on the outside, who know different.
It's only WE who know it to be a lie.
In your mother's world, your father is still around/alive; this is reality for her.
Not knowing where he is may well make her anxious and she may be unable to understand why someone is contradicting her or fobbing her off.
My mum used to say things like, "I don't know if your father will be home for lunch", or "I don't know what your father does these days; he leaves home before I get up and comes back after I've gone to bed". In fact, my dad had died several years before - but in her mind, he was going out a lot/having an affair. I found it upsetting, and pointless, to keep saying "dad's dead, mum", so I used to say things like "I'm sure he's thinking of you/he knows where you are", and change the subject. 5 minutes later, she may have said the same thing again, or she may have said "you know your dad died, don't you?"
The way Dementia Friends explain it is:
Imagine that the person who has dementia is 80 years old and represented by a bookcase. Each shelf is packed with books, and each book represents a memory or event. The books at the top are very recent events; what they had for breakfast, getting dressed, opening the morning post, or whatever. The shelves lower down hold memories from retirement, early parenthood, pre-marriage and childhood.
Now imagine that this book case is hit by a storm - called dementia - and starts to sway and then rock violently. The books start to fall off; with the books on the top shelves falling first.
The storm continues to strike. You may soon find that the top shelves are empty, or almost empty, of books, and the first shelf with any books on represents a time in the person's life when they were in their 50's. So this is their reality. They have no memories after the age of 50 - or few, because we can't tell which books are going to fall and which remain. This will mean that modern gadgets and technology will be completely unfamiliar to them.
This is what is difficult for us. We have all our "books", and are trying to live now and remind our loved one about now, or a recent time, when in fact they don't have any memory of it and quite simply won't know what we are talking about. We need to discover their reality, and live it with them.
I have read accounts of people in care homes, for example, who walked around bending down at each resident's door for a few minutes, or tried to help people across the room, or tried to organise people into doing something. Their behaviour made no sense at all, and care staff used to try to correct it. THEN someone discovered that the person used to be a postman/policeman/teacher or whatever, and in their minds, they were still delivering the mail, teaching a class or whatever. Because the staff knew what was happening, it was easier to deal with.
Sorry, I've rambled on a bit.
