I am grieving for my Mum as she slips away from us. Her dementia has progressed rapidly since she had a major stroke in August. Since then a series of mini strokes/TIAs have taken away more and more of the person she was. She is still a sweet lovely person and in a way that makes it worse.
She spends most mornings crying inconsolably because she knows what is happening to her. Yesterday my Dad rang me in despair. Mum was in a terrible state because she wanted a shower and couldn't remember what to do. For WEEKS I've been trying to persuade her to shower and wash her hair and then she chose yesterday as the day she HAD to have one RIGHT NOW! Dad has Vascular Parkinsonism so I certainly didn't want him to try and help her in case she pulled him over as she got in/out of the bath so I sped over there.
At first she was ok, knowing I was there to help her. She had a shower with me standing by and prompting her how to wash etc, then she bent over the basin while I washed her hair. Then I tried to get her to dress herself (she is still able to do this).
Then she looked at me and I knew the curtain had fallen: she suddenly didn't know who I was. She asked me if I was Joyce (her sister), then Anne (her cousin) and got very confused when I told her who I was. We sat next to each other on the bed as she held my hand and looked at me in total confusion, trying SO HARD to remember, with me willing her to realise yet not wanting her to get more upset. Eventually I managed to persuade her it didn't matter and to get dressed. I thought she might be better if I left her to it, so I went through to the dining room where my Dad was trying to finish his breakfast (2 hours and counting!).
Then Mum came through, still in her dressing gown, sobbing uncontrollably. She took Dad's hand and said 'I couldn't remember her. My own daughter. I can't remember her. I'm going mad.' It was beyond awful. She knows what is happening to her and is still aware enough to be terrified. I'm not surprised she cries for hours most mornings, I certainly would.
Yet still I haven't cried. I wonder what is wrong with me. I've come close a few times but swallowed it down, I have to hold it all together and I wonder if, once I started, I wouldn't be able to stop.
I nearly went a few days ago when I went through Mum's knitting bag (she'd asked me to get rid of it as she accepted she wouldn't be knitting any more). An accomplished knitter, she used to knit complicated little squares then stitch them all together and crochet round the edges to give to the local premature baby unit. In her knitting bag I found dozens of assorted squares all ready to be stitched and a square still on the needle almost finished. That's when I nearly broke but I stopped myself.
An everlasting memory from my childhood is the continuous soft clicking of Mum's knitting needles as we watched TV. She couldn't even do a basic stitch now. A part of me is almost praying for her awareness to go so that she no longer realises what is happening, it would be kinder for her I think, but dreadful for my Dad. Watching her being tormented like this is agonising and seeing my dear Dad struggling to get out of a chair and barely able to walk around the bungalow while she hovers around him anxiously is just horrific. I catch myself wishing it would all be over for their sakes because their conditions are both so cruel and merciless, then I hate myself for being so awful because essentially I'm wishing my parents were dead. And yet I still haven't cried.
Except when the cat died before Christmas. I cried like Gwyneth Paltrow then!