Dad wants to go "home"

[HelenMG]

I hope someone can help me here. Is there any thing I should, or could be doing to try and help my dad through this terrible phase.?
Dad increasingly wants to go "home " to where he thinks his mother and family are(were; they are all deceased). He has also started to say that "no one told him they were all dead", and this upsets him, and me. He fluctuates between knowing and not knowing that his family members have all passed on.
Today he asked the care lady for a lend of some money so he could get the train home. I don't think he would make it there (he usually turns back when he is out for a walk like that - and If he is gone for more than 30 mins we look for him as he is never that far away and he likes his walks.)

When he talks like this I try to persude him that I don't think anyone is there any more and that he has lived "here" now for more than fifty years, and that here is home now. He will fluctuate between loving where he lives now, with us around him, to hating it and wanting to get home.

Where as this used to happen now and then before, inbetween days of better lucidity , it has now become almost a daily occurrence. I never know if its the pills (his medication changed recently) or just the natural progression. I did bring him "home" a few months ago but he didn't really recognise it and didn't look for his mum or family members. I am not sure if I should bring him again. Can any one advise me ? Thanks, these threads are so useful.
HelenMG xx

 

[christine_batch]

Dear Helen,
Sorry about your dad and wanting to go home.

It is very common and more people will come on line and give help and support.

Fortunately, my husband who has AD and remembering his past had a very unhappy childhood and never went through that phase.

Best wishes
Christine

 

[jc141265]

Home is where the heart is

Dad used to ask to go home all of the time, but for us we came to realise that it wasn't really 'home' that he was seeking as we took him time and time again to the various places he might have been referring to (where he grew up etc). It didn't matter where we took him, Dad would just constantly say he wanted to go home and get angry if we didn't try to help him.
I don't know if it was different for Dad as his dementia took away his language but I think in Dad's case, the 'home' he was seeking was someplace that he could feel normal, safe and comfortable in, so it wasn't necessarily a physical location he was remembering and wanting to go to, just a mental state he could no longer achieve or find on his own. The only way he could express his desire to feel like this was to say he wanted to go home. And the only way he could feel like he might feel better was to keep moving, he became uncomfortable just sitting and going nowhere as I guess these were the times when all the scarey thoughts couldn't be ignored.
So if you situation is like ours, taking your Dad to his 'home' may not help with regards to the end destination...however you may find keeping him busy and moving may ease this anxious need for 'home'. Regardless, if he is like Dad you are going to get so sick of hearing of the need to go home,the very phrase will begin to drive you crazy, and you may even have to bear the brunt of his anger because you aren't able to please him even when you do try to take him home.
However this phase did eventually pass for Dad, so hopefully it will pass for you too. And maybe it will help you to tolerate it better and tolerate any anger and upset that it causes if you do consider that possibly what he is really wanting is to feel safe and normal like he remembers he used to be able to feel like. It is much easier to empathise when you think of it like that, than if you are just thinking he is making crazy man requests that make no sense.
Hope things don't get too unbearable.
Best wishes,

 

[Taffy]

Dear Helen,

My mum also longed for home and her mum. I felt as mum deteriorated the desire became more stronger and I think the fear of not being able to remember or recognize present situations brings out that instinct of wanting to feel safe and secure hence the desire to return to that place and time were everything was so much better.

I do sympathise with you it's very distressing seeing the sufferer having to live this anguish over and over. With mum sometimes things I would say relieved her anguish and other times it made things worse. Mum's dementia was fairly advanced and not much reasoning ability was left her sentences were very short but she never forgot her mum believing most times she was alive and I would go along with her telling a little tale to fit....if she said, our mum is dead I would say, oh....I'll see if that is true so don't cry....it's so soul destroying.

Take Care, Taffy.

 

[Grannie G]

Hello Helen

Oh how I understand how upsetting you find this need of your father`s to `go home`. It has been a daily occurrence of my husband`s for the last 3 years at least and is just beginning to ease.

My husband used to pack his bags in readiness, or gather his possessions together. This seems to have stopped. He used to go to the railway station to buy tickets to the place he thought of as home. This too has stopped.

It is so painful to endure but I never found a way of stopping it. Only sometimes could I distract him by saying we would go `tomorrow`.

This link might help you.

http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/factsheet/525

It won`t give you a cure bit it will help you see it`s a regular symptom of the condition.

 

[sue38]

Hi Helen,

My Dad was constantly talking about going 'home', although he has lived in his present house for the last 47 years and has not lived in the place he considers home for over 50 years.

Unlike your Dad he knows that his parents are dead, but believes he has friends and other relatives there. He has packed a bag and set off down the road more than once, but so far we have managed to catch up with him and persuade him to come home.

'Home' for him is only 20 minutes by car and sometimes we do take him there, drive around for a while and then he is satisfied and ready to come home.

The wanting to go home has lessened to a certain extent, but still whenever he is upset he says 'I should never have come back here'.

I have tried to make sense of what he says and try and reason with him (will I ever learn?) but I find it more effective to change the subject or to say something like 'Yes you can go, but let's wait until the weather's warmer (or cooler at the moment!)/ so-and-so gets back etc' or I say 'Surely you don't want to leave the dog!' This usually has more of an effect than you don't want to leave mum/me/sisters/grandchildren! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

All I can say is that for us this is no longer the every day issue it once was.

 

[sparkle]

My Mum went through that stage, which lasted quite a while, but eventually she got through it. (She is now in full time care in a very good home)

Dad used to keep a sheet on the fridge door which he would read to her whenever she started to get agitated.
It had her potted history on it, where she grew up, about her parents dying, the house moves they had done together, their wedding, kids and grandkids ..... everything to set the scene around her.

It is so hard, but maybe one idea is to make a scrap book of the older family pictures - Mum would happily sit and talk thru who they all were and yet had problems with the later ones. Then you could sit and talk it through with him.

 

[HelenMG]

Dear everyone,
thank you so much for these posts. It is so heartbreaking to see my dad so agitated about getting home. I realise it is just him trying to find some reassurance, security, and sense to his muddled frightning world. I haven't done an old family memory scrap book for him yet but I must do. We have some old albums but I have to get a few of the photos out a bit more and make them more accessible to him. The potted history page on the fridge is a good idea.

I do try the diversionary tactics about how lovely it is here, and how I would miss him so much if he went, but i think what he needs is something concrete to latch on to. maybe words are too hard. photos and pictures and written words might help more so i will definitely do a potted history for him. Thanks Sparkle, for that sugestion.

No one has said anything about pills and medicine so i think it is just part of the disease. Today, late afternoon, (often his difficult time ), he went off to bed at 5.30. then later got up and came out with me, and said he wasn't right in his head and he wasn't the man he should be, or used to be. and to forgive him, and he was having terrible thoughts and would I help him. So heartbreaking. I am as upbeat and positive and reassuring with him as much as possible (though the frustration creeps in now and then with the repetivitiveness, and incomprehension) but when he seems to have glimmers of insight into how he is now, it is both heartbreaking and reassuring, there is still some of him in there that can relate.

Again thanks everyone. It doesn't help that I am off at my lovely job all day when in my heart I also wish I could be with him more.
Helen xx