Hi everyone, hope this is in the right place! I'm a first year uni student in Canterbury and my granddad has dementia/Alzheimer's. He, and my cousins/aunt and uncle live with him in Oxford and my home home address is about 200 miles away from that.
Up until November last year I could have a really good conversation with him on the phone lasting for about half an hour but pretty much Christmas completely threw him off kilter, he's become completely withdrawn and when I do have a conversation with him (it's gone from basically once a day to about once every 2 weeks) it lasts max 2 minutes because "the postie comes" and then when my Mum (her Dad) rings too it's a similar affaire, and he turns the phone off at the plug so no one can ring.
I want to try to stay in contact with him, I've thought about writing letters and tried to but it feels horrible because it feels like I'm basically (sorry if this sounds too forceful) writing a letter to someone who's dead and I hate that so much!
To make matters worse I'm scared (like really scared) of my Aunt and to an extent my Uncle because they get really aggressive (by aggressive I mean things like "she doesn't do enough to help, she's a ******* daughter etc etc etc) with my Mum and have done for many years about the situation. I feel really protective to my Mum because I don't like anyone being mean to her.
Despite me being 18 and me and mum having an agreement that we'd talk openly and honestly and never keep secrets my aunt believes it's actually nothing at all to do with me so basically I should butt out, but in the same breath I'm like I'm the eldest of his 3 grandkids. I also feel quite not in control of the situation.
He lives in a massive house with my aunt, uncle and two cousins (his two grandkids ) who are going away to australia for three weeks over Easter- He's basically going to have to go in a home
could someone answer these questions I have?
- I'm worried I won't be allowed to call him if he's in a home - what's the system for that?
- I'm worried something will happen to him and I'll never get to speak to him again is there any way of getting over that?
- I'm soooooo scared of my aunt and co that I don't know how we are going to get over it, at the same time I don't want to go over there or talk to her because I'm scared of her!
- I also keep walking past the same spots me and my granddad had really long conversations about really random stuff - any way to dissociate the place with that?
Sorry for the super long message :/
Up until November last year I could have a really good conversation with him on the phone lasting for about half an hour but pretty much Christmas completely threw him off kilter, he's become completely withdrawn and when I do have a conversation with him (it's gone from basically once a day to about once every 2 weeks) it lasts max 2 minutes because "the postie comes" and then when my Mum (her Dad) rings too it's a similar affaire, and he turns the phone off at the plug so no one can ring.
I want to try to stay in contact with him, I've thought about writing letters and tried to but it feels horrible because it feels like I'm basically (sorry if this sounds too forceful) writing a letter to someone who's dead and I hate that so much!
To make matters worse I'm scared (like really scared) of my Aunt and to an extent my Uncle because they get really aggressive (by aggressive I mean things like "she doesn't do enough to help, she's a ******* daughter etc etc etc) with my Mum and have done for many years about the situation. I feel really protective to my Mum because I don't like anyone being mean to her.
Despite me being 18 and me and mum having an agreement that we'd talk openly and honestly and never keep secrets my aunt believes it's actually nothing at all to do with me so basically I should butt out, but in the same breath I'm like I'm the eldest of his 3 grandkids. I also feel quite not in control of the situation.
He lives in a massive house with my aunt, uncle and two cousins (his two grandkids ) who are going away to australia for three weeks over Easter- He's basically going to have to go in a home
could someone answer these questions I have?- I'm worried I won't be allowed to call him if he's in a home - what's the system for that?
- I'm worried something will happen to him and I'll never get to speak to him again
is there any way of getting over that? - I'm soooooo scared of my aunt and co that I don't know how we are going to get over it, at the same time I don't want to go over there or talk to her because I'm scared of her!
- I also keep walking past the same spots me and my granddad had really long conversations about really random stuff - any way to dissociate the place with that?
Sorry for the super long message :/
