I should never have come back here

[sue38]

I have read lots of posts about people wanting to 'go home', but it seems my Dad has a variation on this theme.

He and my Mum have been married for 51 years and have lived in their present house for more than 40 years. He regularly says that he made a mistake and 'I should never have come back here' but apart from holidays and the odd non AD related hospital stay, he has never been anywhere else.

This comes up when he is having a particularly bad time - like the last few days- but we cannot get to the bottom of this. Today I told him that he had lived in this house for more than 40 years and he gave me that look that says 'just who has got dementia?'

I realise that you cannot reason with dementia but I wondered if anyone else has come across this as I really don't know how to respond to and help him with this.

Sue

 

[jenniferpa]

Well my hands going up. Mummy doesn't want to go "home" per se, but sometimes it does seem as if she believes that she is living somehwere that she lived in her youth. Now that's probably not surprising: she spent the war in the wrens, and then was in student dorms when she was training to be a teacher, so those are the only communal living arrangement that she has known, so I'm not entirely surprised that she thinks she's back there. A friend of mine's mother who has AD and lives in a nursing home, it convinced she is back living in the hotel where she was first employed as a maid. Not exactly the same as your father's case, I know. I tend to say "Oh really" and change the subject.

Jennifer

 

[Grannie G]

. He regularly says that he made a mistake and 'I should never have come back here' Sue

Thank you Sue. Your post has been so helpful in making me realize that anywhere would be considered better than the place where Alzheimers sufferers actually are.

Love xx

 

[kayleigh999]

Hi

Hi Sue

yep my Mom is exactly the same. She said it today "I want to go home" Also like your folks has lived in same house with Dad for 41 yrs. At first not understanding the illness we used to try to press her as to where she meant and thought she meant Ireland where she originated from as a young woman. She has not specified where home is apart from saying her home is not home but "some prison someone shoved me in"

Again, I wonder if it is a sad insight into sufferers perception of this terrible ilness

I am thinking of you.

Kxxx

 

[Áine]

He regularly says that he made a mistake and 'I should never have come back here'

hi Sue, really feel for you in this one. It reminds me of my dad - similar situation in that (at the time I'm talking about) he'd lived in the same house for over 30 years ... but was desperate to "go home". It scared me when he first said it .... he'd not been diagnosed with dementia or anything at that time and I knew nothing about it. I went through the same thing like Kayleigh of trying to find out where he wanted to go back to.

In a very demented but very insightful moment he said he knew that the place he wanted to go back to was the house that he was in, and it was his current address that he was giving when he was asking to go home. He wanted to be taken out and brought back in again.

I think the "mistake" your dad (and mine) was referring to is that the house is no longer the house as they remember it and felt safe in. Maybe your dad, like mine, wants to go back to his own house, but back 10, 20 years to when he understood what was going on in it and felt safe in it.

 

[Margarita]

was referring to is that the house is no longer the house as they remember it and felt safe in. Maybe your dad, like mine, wants to go back to his own house, but back 10, 20 years to when he understood what was going on in it and felt safe in it.

Now could not have wrote that better , well said that just what I felt my mum was doing , but I only relies that later on , as I tried to keep fining that place for her.

Then out of the blue she stop asking

 

[hawaii50]

My mum has been in the same house for 52 years and many times every day she says to me that she wishes someone would come and take her back to her home. I think it is because she feels so insecure because she no longer recognises anything in her home but her long term memory tells her that home is a safe place therefore she believes if she could just get there she would be safe again.

Having experienced this in her own home there is a sense of comfort knowing that if she asks me to take her home when she is in a nursing home that it wont necessarily mean she is unhappy just wanting to be in a place that she could recognise and feel safe in.