Good evening,
I joined this community because I've been struggling with the progression of my grandfather's dementia diagnosis. Growing up, I would see him and my grandmother once a week if not more and we were very close. He's 96 years old now but has likely been struggling with memory degeneration for years. Due to a strenuous relationship between my grandparents and my mom in the last few years, they rarely visited with each other for years and I have lived at least a six hour drive away from them since 2014. Although we knew he was getting forgetful, my parents only learned how severe my grandfather's memory issues had become after my grandmother broke here wrist in January and required their assistance with daily life.
Shortly after my grandfather was committed to a memory care facility. At first he was combative, trying to escape and asking when he could go home. At this time, I still saw a lot of the person I love in him and could hardly tell he was struggling aside from how frequently he repeated himself and the fact that he called me his daughter while still asking questions that indicated he knew I was me.
About two weeks ago, my partner and I returned to my hometown as my grandmother is having to do renovations to her home in order to spend down her assets and qualify for Medicaid and needed assistance sorting through her own belongings and my grandfathers to clear the house. We visited my grandfather twice in this time. The change from my last visit in March was like night and day. He had no idea who I was, described the nursing home as his house, and was calling another patient by my grandmother's name. It was shocking and it broke my heart.
This is the first experience I've had with losing someone very close to me. Although both of my paternal grandparents have passed, I rarely saw them and while loved them, the sense of loss was no where close to what I feel this time. I feel guilty for not visiting more in the last few years and an extremely confusing sense of loss because the person I knew does not seem to be there anymore and yet when I see him, he's still my grandfather. It has been something ever-present on my mind since then and I've found myself crying easily in even the most mildly stressful situation, whenever I think about him, and sometimes even without a direct trigger. I'm hoping this community will help me to find some peace with the situation and maybe provide me with some better coping skills.
Thank you all in advance
