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Cappuccino42 Posted January 2022

Vent - living in a ghost world with mum's dementia 🤷🏼‍♀️

I’m in my late 30’s and feeling like I’m living in ghost town on bad days.


My grandparents passed away when I was a young kid (one I never even met), 2 of my uncles have passed away, one cousin, my brother... and... Mum has dementia.


On bad days, this is all my Mum talks about! But all of these people are dead.


In one way it’s funny and on another note it’s rather depressing to be dragged into the sad memories on a rotating manner. They aren’t exactly what I want to think about minute by minute.


Some of the conversation starts are:


“Your uncle 1 told me this”.


“Your cousin really is a good singer, she’s been performing at”.


”Your brother had to do this and reminded you that...”


”I no longer have my parents (me thinking,...no you haven’t had them for 30+ yrs).


“Your uncle 2 and I decided that it’s”


I know with dementia it’s easier to just go along with it all but why do they all have to be dead people :( it makes me feel like I’m living with ghosts and sometimes even freaky to be quite honest.


Sometimes I think,.. maybe they are really talking to her as angels, prepping her for the world beyond ours.... who’s to really know. Nonetheless they definitely push my emotional buttons.
I try distract but often it just switches to the next dead person.


My brother, cousin and both my uncles were all sudden departures and I guess Mum talking about them partly magnifies also the fact that I am all alone in this,..


Sometimes I will flip and yell at Mum and say “THEY ARE ALL DEAD, end of conversation”. And this is because the talk makes me sad, depressed and lonely. I feel awful about that and it then makes her sad but sometimes if I don’t,.. she will keep pestering me like “Your brother asked you to do this, why haven’t you done it yet” Etc,...


Anyhow, this is on the bad days,.. I guess this is yet another phase to go through,....

lealonnie1 Jan 2022
I hear you loud & clear. You're not posting this to ask for & get advice about developing 'patience' and 'being there yourself someday', which is highly doubtful. Old age does not automatically = dementia. You're venting, which is something we all should be able to do, especially where dementia is concerned b/c it's VERY difficult to deal with especially if the loved one is living with you!

My mother is 95 (living in Memory Care) with advanced dementia & ALL she talks about is the dead relatives, except for her husband (my father) of 68 years who's also passed but who she NEVER mentions, oddly enough! It's her mama and her papa and her sisters & brothers that she talks about continuously! She calls my husband Angelo who's actually her sister's late husband who died in the early 90's! At first I thought like you did; that maybe she was really talking to the spirits of these deceased siblings and parents in preparation for her OWN passing, but now I've changed my mind. She's been doing this for more than 6 months now so the 'prep' time should be long gone; if she was getting ready to pass away, she'd have done so by now! I think she's just gone back in time to when they were all younger and still interacting, I guess. Who knows? It just stresses me out to keep coming up with on-the-spot stories about WHERE they are, what they're doing and why they are not calling her or going to see her? That is the sad part, really; that she feels abandoned by family members who are DEAD, not ignoring her!

I guess this is another phase to go through, you're right, but who knows what is coming next? God give us & them the strength to endure it, until He takes them Home to be at eternal peace. That's my prayer.

NightHeron Jan 2022
Have a little sympathy, folks: she lost her brother at a young age (certainly not at an age when you expect to start losing siblings), and mother keeps talking as if he's alive. This must be very difficult and painful to hear. There's more to this than just not having patience. This is reopening a personal wound.

I don't know that there's any solution–OP might just have to make the best of it while it lasts (and we all know it won't last forever)–but this would be hard for anyone.

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MJ1929 Jan 2022
The three main people my mother talked about were all dead, but she didn't know it. One was her imaginary husband who was in reality her first boyfriend and had died in 2009. (She hadn't seen him since 1946.) The other two were her two favorite cousins, both of whom died in the two years Mom was in Memory Care, and I never told her.

I'd just go right along with her conversations -- it's all you really can do -- so I'd ask her what Dan was up to, or how Suzi looked today. She had all kinds of things to say, and it made her happy to talk about them. I even kept a journal of stories she told about Dan, the imaginary husband. They were real whoppers!

That's really what you should try to do. Just go with her reality. I realize these are all people you've lost, too, and it is sad. I adored those two cousins as well, but not telling Mom they were gone kept them alive for me, too.

As others have said, try to adopt a more patient attitude with her. She can't help it, and I'm sure you don't want to hurt her, too.

Artgirl11 Jan 2022
Put a bit of 'patience' in your coffee ... you will be there someday!

PeggySue2020 Jan 2022
I recommend you watch Black Mirror: San Junipero (S3E4) on Netflix or purchase it on Amazon. It SEEMS like it's about young people, but it is really about the alternate realities that old people are living in their minds, ie that they are 18-22.

Ariadnee Jan 2022
I don't know your level of tolerance with stuff like this, but I'd start interviewing your mother about these dead relatives. Draw up a family tree. Any photos of these people available for her to look at? And if she repeats something about Uncle Joe, then ask about his brother, mother, sister, whoever.
You'll have a more complete family history, perhaps a better sense of belonging to them and perhaps not feeling as alone in all of this.
Oh and the yelling part-that is hard not to do. I did yell a few months ago, and things escalated to the point where I thought I'd have to get the cops to calm down my husband with early dementia.
When are your days off/respite care?

cwillie Jan 2022
Maybe look at it as an opportunity to get to know more about your relatives and your mother, she had a whole life before you came along and it's obvious those people were an important part of it.

And I'm sure you already know that yelling at her that they are all dead is just plain cruel, if you can't handle your roll in all this it's time to start implementing your Plan B. (You do have a Plan B I hope?)

Geaton777 Jan 2022
Correction: NOT a duplicate post.

(There were 4 in the Questions section but admin must have moved 1 of them here to Discussions).

Geaton777 Jan 2022
Duplicate post. Reported.

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