Hi
I’d just like to introduce myself and apologise in advance for the long post.
My lovely Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimers in 2020 she currently still lives at home with my amazing Dad who is her full time carer.
As a family we have spent the last 4 years coming to terms with this hideous disease, it feels like it’s always one step ahead of us, no matter how hard we try to catch up!
From time to time I’ve used this forum and I’m blown away by the depth of support, I can relate to virtually every one of your posts and it's both comforting and desperately heartbreaking in equal measures.
Last week I came onto the forum looking for some answers, ideas, support – I’m not even sure really what I was looking for (which is often the case) and every post I read hit home, so very hard that I had to turn it off, it felt like I was drowning in a sea of heartbreak and despair, and so the following morning I was thinking about the coping tactics I’ve used over the years and I wanted to share these with you in case it helped even just one other person
Early on in my Mums diagnosis I came across a lady whose Mum was much further along her journey than we were and she would relay happy, sometimes hilarious anecdotes of her Mum, these were always told with such love and warmth but also real hilarity that it made me realise that despite the fact that my Mum was changing we could still really laugh together, it’s not always easy because we know that if it wasn’t for this hideous disease these situations wouldn’t happen but also these are real memories and lighter, amusing memories which I know my Mum (without the disease) would find funny
This disease will not define the final memories we as a family have of my dear Mum, we will still laugh together and I know that my Mum would approve with all her heart
So come on in addition to offering support for those moments which are often too much to bear, let’s celebrate and share our happy times – let’s laugh in the face of this ******* disease, so in loving memory of Happy Helen and in the name of my lovely Mum, Happy Viv, let’s share the happy times…
So (and it’s not perhaps the best but it’s the most recent) we were in Tesco’s last week, my Mum loves to investigate all the aisles and discover new inventions such as Oxo stock cubes, we got to the checkout and she decided to properly march up and down through the checkout, with a salute at each turn, singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ (no idea where that came from) the lady on the checkout joined in and sang along – she said it made her day, at the end of the performance (and it truly was a performance) my Mum smiled and said quietly to me, ‘I do it on purpose you know, just to see people’s reactions’
We can read what we like into that, but the simple truth is that in that moment we were all laughing and I have to hold onto that!
The other recent thing she has taken to doing is telling everyone who’ll listen that I knit her gloves (you would have to know me to understand how hilarious that statement is in it’s own right) but she got off the day care mini bus the other day and shouted, ‘this is Deborah, she’ll have your gloves ready next week’, then she turned to me and said, ‘they all like my gloves, so I’ve told them you’ll make some for them’…
Sending love to all of you, you are doing an amazing job! x
I’d just like to introduce myself and apologise in advance for the long post.
My lovely Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimers in 2020 she currently still lives at home with my amazing Dad who is her full time carer.
As a family we have spent the last 4 years coming to terms with this hideous disease, it feels like it’s always one step ahead of us, no matter how hard we try to catch up!
From time to time I’ve used this forum and I’m blown away by the depth of support, I can relate to virtually every one of your posts and it's both comforting and desperately heartbreaking in equal measures.
Last week I came onto the forum looking for some answers, ideas, support – I’m not even sure really what I was looking for (which is often the case) and every post I read hit home, so very hard that I had to turn it off, it felt like I was drowning in a sea of heartbreak and despair, and so the following morning I was thinking about the coping tactics I’ve used over the years and I wanted to share these with you in case it helped even just one other person
Early on in my Mums diagnosis I came across a lady whose Mum was much further along her journey than we were and she would relay happy, sometimes hilarious anecdotes of her Mum, these were always told with such love and warmth but also real hilarity that it made me realise that despite the fact that my Mum was changing we could still really laugh together, it’s not always easy because we know that if it wasn’t for this hideous disease these situations wouldn’t happen but also these are real memories and lighter, amusing memories which I know my Mum (without the disease) would find funny
This disease will not define the final memories we as a family have of my dear Mum, we will still laugh together and I know that my Mum would approve with all her heart
So come on in addition to offering support for those moments which are often too much to bear, let’s celebrate and share our happy times – let’s laugh in the face of this ******* disease, so in loving memory of Happy Helen and in the name of my lovely Mum, Happy Viv, let’s share the happy times…
So (and it’s not perhaps the best but it’s the most recent) we were in Tesco’s last week, my Mum loves to investigate all the aisles and discover new inventions such as Oxo stock cubes, we got to the checkout and she decided to properly march up and down through the checkout, with a salute at each turn, singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ (no idea where that came from) the lady on the checkout joined in and sang along – she said it made her day, at the end of the performance (and it truly was a performance) my Mum smiled and said quietly to me, ‘I do it on purpose you know, just to see people’s reactions’
We can read what we like into that, but the simple truth is that in that moment we were all laughing and I have to hold onto that!
The other recent thing she has taken to doing is telling everyone who’ll listen that I knit her gloves (you would have to know me to understand how hilarious that statement is in it’s own right) but she got off the day care mini bus the other day and shouted, ‘this is Deborah, she’ll have your gloves ready next week’, then she turned to me and said, ‘they all like my gloves, so I’ve told them you’ll make some for them’…
Sending love to all of you, you are doing an amazing job! x
