It is tough...

Sitting at the breakfast table, listening to dad tell yet another one of his stories about truck driving where, inevitably, it comes out that he knows everything and the guys loading or unloading his truck are morons....I suddenly get the urge to scream "NO ONE CARES!" Because, in reality, no one does...

But grams and dad are good for each other. Dad likes to retell stories and grams can't remember what she hears, almost as soon as she hears it. It's just the rest of us able-minded people who get irritated and wish we could have the remote from Click so we can mute or fast-forward the same stories every day.

I don't mean to sound heartless, but Alzheimer's doesn't take its toll on its patients. They can't remember what is happening to them. Alzheimer's takes its toll on the close family of the patient, who deal with it daily and can't find support groups or even just support from other, extended family, mainly because we are afraid of telling a family member something that will get back to grams and make everything worse.

This isn't all sunshine n roses n unicorns. This is tough. It pains me to see grams declining like this and no one (other than the people who live here) truly understand what is going on. Even when we had family visit, grams was on her best behavior n the family left without truly understanding what it is like. You got to go to your hotel for the 3 days you were here. You got to escape and go back to Wisconsin. I'm not looking to play the victim, but if any of you truly worried about her, you'd do much more than call every few weeks. You wouldn't buy her a medical alert bracelet for Alzheimer's when she didn't want one. You don't force things on her. And if you truly cared, you'd listen to Dad when he would write emails to ya'll, describing the difficulties of Alzheimer's.

But you don't. You don't care. The reality for you is that you are happy to tell yourself "well, at least we saw her one last time before she died, while she still remembers who we are". You don't care about being a support system for anyone but yourselves.

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