Who’s on first?
Oct. 21st, 2022 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizillaJust spent a half hour on the phone with my mom. She is trying to figure out who will be at her house and when. My sister flew in last night from New Mexico, spent the night with my parents, and is driving to Ontario today. She will be back at their house tomorrow. My husband and I will go to their house for the afternoon, day after tomorrow.
Mom wants to plan meals, assign bedrooms, arrange to pick people up, etc. She insisted I justify WHY each person is not spending the night, tonight, tomorrow, the night after. She needs details to demolish those reasons and get her way. But she can’t hold it all in her head. She can’t remember what day is today, what day is tomorrow, who I am, where I live, who my sister is married to, that she lives in NM, why her husband is in NM, who I am married to and where I live, where she herself lives, and so on. So I am answering all these questions over and over, and she wants to argue every one of them, over and over.
I don’t like to promise I will be there when I won’t. But it might be time to just tell her yes she can have her way, in every detail. Because NO is just too abstract for her.
I hope my dad doesn’t remind her of the opportunity to cook. She was never good at it, and with the dementia it’s become downright dangerous.
Mom wants to plan meals, assign bedrooms, arrange to pick people up, etc. She insisted I justify WHY each person is not spending the night, tonight, tomorrow, the night after. She needs details to demolish those reasons and get her way. But she can’t hold it all in her head. She can’t remember what day is today, what day is tomorrow, who I am, where I live, who my sister is married to, that she lives in NM, why her husband is in NM, who I am married to and where I live, where she herself lives, and so on. So I am answering all these questions over and over, and she wants to argue every one of them, over and over.
I don’t like to promise I will be there when I won’t. But it might be time to just tell her yes she can have her way, in every detail. Because NO is just too abstract for her.
I hope my dad doesn’t remind her of the opportunity to cook. She was never good at it, and with the dementia it’s become downright dangerous.
