My mother has recently moved into a care home which offers a caring environment, lovely rooms, nice meals and activities. This should be a vast improvement on how she was living before - not eating, lonely, crying through the night, wandering off and feeling terrified. She is feeling very confused with everything though and still thinks she can do all the routine things she used to do such as cooking, cleaning and going to town. She believes that she has been doing all these things even though she has been unable to for some time now. She has Alzheimers & COPD.
One day she is reasonably ok and another day she is very abusive towards me, but the one thing that is really draining me emotionally is her constant comments about wanting to die. She says, 'If someone would just give me a pill to die, I'd take it.' 'If I look happy, I am not. It's just an act and I want to die.' 'Don't ever get old.' 'Why couldn't I have died at 80.' 'I don't want to live anymore. Why can't I just die.' 'You've got all this to come, so don't get old.'
This constant reference to the perils of being old and wanting to die is really playing on my mind. I am even dreaming about her and then waking up several times a night. I know that not everyone gets dementia or has a bad time in old age but it is like being drip fed misery and I keep thinking that old age which is not too far away will be a nightmare. This leads to the situation where I then feel guilty for worrying about myself rather than her, but dementia is so unfairly one sided in relation to feelings. Sometimes I would like to just scream from the rooftops asking her to shut up or just for once say something positive.
One day she is reasonably ok and another day she is very abusive towards me, but the one thing that is really draining me emotionally is her constant comments about wanting to die. She says, 'If someone would just give me a pill to die, I'd take it.' 'If I look happy, I am not. It's just an act and I want to die.' 'Don't ever get old.' 'Why couldn't I have died at 80.' 'I don't want to live anymore. Why can't I just die.' 'You've got all this to come, so don't get old.'
This constant reference to the perils of being old and wanting to die is really playing on my mind. I am even dreaming about her and then waking up several times a night. I know that not everyone gets dementia or has a bad time in old age but it is like being drip fed misery and I keep thinking that old age which is not too far away will be a nightmare. This leads to the situation where I then feel guilty for worrying about myself rather than her, but dementia is so unfairly one sided in relation to feelings. Sometimes I would like to just scream from the rooftops asking her to shut up or just for once say something positive.