I know I am very lucky compared with so many people who post to Talking Point. My mother is being well cared for in an good home (she has been there for 2 years). She has severe short term memory loss following a stroke and has withdrawn almost completely into herself. She still knows who I am and I can have completely normal conversations with her. I see her every other weekend and she doesn't call me much in between. If I ask her a direct question she says she is fine but misses my father who died 2 years ago. She is 80.
Yet every time I visit her I am miserable for days afterwards. My question is: how do I get to grips with the emotional impact this is having on me?
When I am there she sits on her bed or lies down with her back to me, sleeping or whimpering quietly. She whimpers a lot. She has a lost and frightened expression sometimes. She looks and smells dreadful (the staff do their best but she doesn't make it easy for them).
This is my mother who taught me how to wipe my own bottom but who gave up doing it herself two years ago.
This is my mother who would not leave the house without full makeup, who could make heads turn with her beauty and elegance when she entered a room, now covered in food stains and looking shockingly bad.
This is my mother who says she can't see but then says she doesn't like to wear her glasses because she is "vain."
This is my mother who could do the Times cryptic crossword in minutes, unable to remember more than a couple of things about my father, apart from the fact that she misses him very much.
This is my mother who cannot be left alone with her male carers because she has a tendency to molest them.
Some minutes we can have a completely normal conversation - she is the intelligent and funny woman who brought me up. She really can still beat me at scrabble. We sit and sing the songs from Shakespeare she taught me when I was little. Then the next minute she is like a frightened child clinging to me for comfort.
I guess I just wanted to ask: how do you cope? I guess I am in here for the long term and I need to get to a place of equanimity about this. Frankly at the moment I seem to be suffering more than Mum is, which is daft.
Please let me know how you cope. Has anyone read any good books which would help me to make sense of how Mum is behaving and how I am reacting to it? Or should I stop trying to make sense of it? How do I/ should I try to get back in control of my own feelings?
ChloeE
Yet every time I visit her I am miserable for days afterwards. My question is: how do I get to grips with the emotional impact this is having on me?
When I am there she sits on her bed or lies down with her back to me, sleeping or whimpering quietly. She whimpers a lot. She has a lost and frightened expression sometimes. She looks and smells dreadful (the staff do their best but she doesn't make it easy for them).
This is my mother who taught me how to wipe my own bottom but who gave up doing it herself two years ago.
This is my mother who would not leave the house without full makeup, who could make heads turn with her beauty and elegance when she entered a room, now covered in food stains and looking shockingly bad.
This is my mother who says she can't see but then says she doesn't like to wear her glasses because she is "vain."
This is my mother who could do the Times cryptic crossword in minutes, unable to remember more than a couple of things about my father, apart from the fact that she misses him very much.
This is my mother who cannot be left alone with her male carers because she has a tendency to molest them.
Some minutes we can have a completely normal conversation - she is the intelligent and funny woman who brought me up. She really can still beat me at scrabble. We sit and sing the songs from Shakespeare she taught me when I was little. Then the next minute she is like a frightened child clinging to me for comfort.
I guess I just wanted to ask: how do you cope? I guess I am in here for the long term and I need to get to a place of equanimity about this. Frankly at the moment I seem to be suffering more than Mum is, which is daft.
Please let me know how you cope. Has anyone read any good books which would help me to make sense of how Mum is behaving and how I am reacting to it? Or should I stop trying to make sense of it? How do I/ should I try to get back in control of my own feelings?
ChloeE
