Nevertheless Dementia, We Persist

Caregiving Caregiver Loneliness Caregiver Fear

When we went for our drive Monday she hesitantly let me buckle her in. I gave her a blue thank you card from a friend for the surprise birthday visit Lynne and I gave him. She said, “Oh look, he remembered my name.”
I inserted it in a book of poems I bought her by Mary Oliver titled, Felicity, the quality of being happy.
“Who gave me this, Nancy?”
“Yes.”
I don’t think she remembers I’m Dad when she sees me. She doesn’t call me Dad. She’s losing track faster than I expected, even though she has regularly dropped rapidly followed by stable periods. This feels like the last stage of recognizing people. I knew it was coming, but I am surprised how much I’m afraid. Karen and I cared for her until I lost her, forcing me into a primary focus on Lynne and a memoir to adapt to being a widower. I don’t know what I’ll do when she loses all recognition in steeper and steeper declines. Where do I find my purpose? Is writing her memoir enough? Caregiving is getting harder.
At least we have car trips with a vanilla shake at Dick’s Burgers. I buckled her back into the front seat and set the shake on the roof above my back seat before I climbed in. When I remembered the shake on the roof I hoped it was still on the roof with my smoothly slow driving. It was gone and I needed to run through the car wash. I reminded myself to put drinks on the hood of the car, instead of the roof, so I’ll see it when I get behind the steering wheel. It’s worked for decades. Am I losing it? I recovered by stopping at Starbuck’s in Leschi for her favorite lemonade and iced black tea. She never missed her shake. IBesides, if she’d remembered it we’d have been fine. Karen would have reminded me.
My drive was designed to place her in a sanctuary. I was mostly silent. She agreed to a playlist of her birthday songs and sang their lyrics. I let her rest, relax. My purpose is to stream experiences into her psyche she rarely feels in assisted living. When I drive she moves and sways. She effortlessly experiences cherry blossoms, yellow daffodils, an Orthodox church, playing fields, playground equipment, Montlake elementary, Lake Washington Drive, arboretum, children, horns, jack hammers, air brakes, dogs, cats, a dog kennel, the Coyote shop, the smell of coffee and ripples on Lake Washington glistening with sunshine under a blue sky over snow-capped mountains.
The streaming experience is guiding her mind instead of me, staff, schedules, medications, meals. She is connected with me. She fingered the blue thank you card and rotated Felicity from front to back. She opened it. “That’s so nice of Nancy. I’m going to read this.”
Speaking is easy, flawless. “That playfield is deep. The arboretum is beautiful. Look at the dog. Oh, there’s the dog kennel. That Cayote shop is so good.”
At one point I reached for something near the gear shift and she slapped my hand with the blue thank you. Why? What was that? Was she warding off my hand? I know she’s been afraid and anxious, so was this an impulse to ward off somebody touching her? On our last hug she gave me a loose shoulder hug. Is she fearing an embrace because she is losing recognition of people?
My purpose of the trips iis to give a sanctuary without the necessary demands of institutional care where she is denied, corrected, and redirected. In her sanctuary she did not ponder answers to questionanswering. She was not confused, anxious, lost, afraid, wandering, confronted, threatened, unsteady, alone, hiding, escaping, shouting, angry, aggressive, hopeless, useless, hungry, thirsty, tired, worrying, hurting, stumbling, or falling.
Creating her sanctuary makes me lonely. I don’t tell jokes to hear her laugh, or praise her boys to get her joyous. Talking pressures me and and it’s not reaching her as meaningfully. I have become a bystander, a monitor. I know loneliness is normal in Seattle’s dreary winters, but I haven’t been lonely. I shared my feelings of loneliness with my son on his visit, and my youngest daughter on the phone. She was lonely because she couldn’t visit. I shared my feelings with three care groups, which is all I could work in. They all helped me.
I had an epiphany: visit my daughter in Chico, California. She has been isolated, I have been vaccinated, we are lonely. She isexcited. I’m excited. It lifted my loneliness from facing another weekend alone watching players dribble in every basketball game I could record. I’ll hug my daughter, her husband, my dog and her dog. We’ll walk in 70-degree sunshine along a river running through the forest in Chico. We’ll talk about our writing. I’ll work on her patio. I feel guilty because I’m leaving Lynne in assisted living. I doubt I’ll tell Lynne I’m visiting her sister. She won’t miss me. We can talk by phone. I feel guilty about keeping it a secret. Telling her would make her sad. I worry she’ll discover I’m there. She loves to visit her sister.
When I dropped her off, I turned to wrap her in my arms, but she resisted as if I was smothering her. She turned to ask the concierge for help with Marilyn. He reached out to touch her hand, “OK, say it again Lynne, because I don’t know anyone named Marilyn.”
She held Felicity in her other hand.