How do you handle taking your parent out of memory care for an activity when they do not want to return to the facility?

There may be things you hate, but you are not God, so you can't really be expected to "fix everything". You Mom's vascular dementia is a fact of her and your own life. That won't change. Taking her from the facility is not helping her, and is in fact hurting her so that's the first thing to stop. She is in care because she needs to be in care. She has dementia and may not even remember these outings you seem to have some magical thinking about.
You say guilt but I would ask you to consider that what you are feeling is the other G-word, which is grief. Guilt belongs to felons; they seldom feel it. You are a human being with limitations. You aren't God or a good fairy and you have no magical powers to help in this.
It is normal to mourn and grieve these losses we are witness to in our LOs. It would be abnormal not to be hurt by their losses.
Your Mom has had her life, and I hope it was a good one full of wonderful memories for you. Now she has been overtaken by a dreadful disease which will cause loss upon loss for her throughout the remainder of her life. Don't make it worse with expectations of lovely field trips that only end in more grief.
I am so sorry for all your Mom is going through, and I am sorry that you are grieving so over it, but it is WORTH the grieving. Allow yourself to feel all the pain, but don't allow yourself to make yourself somehow responsible for it.

You shouldn't be taking mom out of the Memory Care ALF anymore, nor should you be feeling guilty about making that decision. With advancing dementia at play, like you admittedly said, she doesn't even realize where 'home' is anymore. Because in reality, 'home' is a place in time now more so than a brick and mortar building. With dementia, the elder goes back in time as the dementia progresses. The best way I've seen it described is as follows:

"As their disease progresses, they may have access only to their first 50 years, then 40, then 30, and so on, until they go back to their childhood memories. This is not an orderly reversal – the person may remember more or less on different days and at different times during the day.

This results eventually, in the person with Alzheimer disease/dementia thinking they are much younger than they actually are. It is not as though they realize they are, for example, 81, but they can only remember their first 30 years. Instead, it is as though they are the person that they were at age 30. Consequently, they are confused, because they may not recognize their family, since they are looking for the individuals they were sharing their life with at age 30."

This is why folks with dementia are constantly asking to 'go home'........they're back in time and looking for some place that no longer exists. Distract her when she talks about going home, and bring out some photos or a sweet snack instead. Get her off the subject of 'home' and that's your best bet.

Your goal now is to keep mom relaxed and not agitated, and in familiar surroundings, which is her Memory Care ALF. When you take her out, she's disoriented and and not sure what's going on. She doesn't want to go back and then you're fighting TO get her back to the MC. That creates a bad scenario for all concerned. Leave her at the MC and take the fun TO HER instead. That's what I did with my mother who lived in MC for the last almost 3 years of her life. It got too difficult to take her out, and if I brought her to my house, she immediately wanted to leave and would get hyper and nervous about it 'getting late' or 'the weather'. I soon realized I was creating more trouble for her than curing by taking her out. So I'd bring food and fun to her in the Memory Care. I'd bring pizza and the grandkids and we'd have a pizza party there in the library. Or Christmas Eve dinner of lasagna with gifts and decorations. She didn't feel like she was missing out that way, and neither did I.

That's what I suggest to you: bring the fun to HER in the MC now and cut down on the stress and confusion in bringing her out. Realize that she's in a different state of mind now, and YOU enter HER reality.

Here's the article I mentioned:

Understanding the Dementia Experience, by Jennifer Ghent-Fuller 
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/210580

It's a free download with fantastic information about dementia from HER perspective. Lots of tips and tricks to use yourself to help you with the journey you're on.

Best of luck

Sometimes the family wants to go on treating the dementia patient like the person they used to be. I had that problem with my dad’s sister who believed that if we treated him as if he were okay, he’d still be okay! This was delusional thinking about a man who was 92 and had cancer and dementia. My aunt caused no end of problems to say the least. When a LO gets very sick, we need to accept that family outings are no longer possible and that our wish to continue them is to make ourselves feel better, not the patient. They know very little, don’t remember the events, and could possibly be confused, agitated, or otherwise mentally harmed. I know, all we want is for things to be like they used to be. But that’s impossible.

I am sure that you want to take mom on outings but it sounds like the stress is not worth it for either of you.
If there is a family gathering that you would love to have her attend why not bring the people to her. Small groups can visit at a time, not the entire clan at one time.
So people that have not seen her in a while can be the first to visit. (any from out of town for example) then the rest. Best if it would or could be done over the course of 2 or 3 days.
She would have visitors, would be less stressed.
No reason for the "G" word. You can feel bad or sad that she can not be involved but guilt should not be a feeling about this.

My mother asks every time I visit to take her home. She no longer has a home and has been in her facility for more than 2 years. But she still asks every single time I visit.

I never take her anywhere, she is no longer mobile so would be very difficult to do so, but when I was able, she didn't want to return and got very angry. She also got very little joy out of going places.

I personally wouldn't take her anywhere and instead bring as many things to her that will give her joy.

Is your Mom in a private room? Is there a visitors area?

Your Mom could be asking to go home just because she wants a change in what she sees and for her, home is a way of asking for that scenery change. I used to think that I’d be able to take my Mom with me on errands and go out to eat with her. However, as the dementia has progressed, it has been tougher to do the wheelchair transfers as well as she is becoming more incontinent and combative.

I am sure that when you take her out, she is having more fun and stimulation, than if she stayed within the facility. She wants to be with you guys since you guys are doing fun things and if she only sees you while you are doing fun things, then you must be doing fun things all the time and she wants to be there!

So I am a boring person. I bring outside food to her place (especially fresh fruits). We try new takeout food in her room. I notice that my mother brightens up if we walk around the parking lot in the sun then go back. We still go for rides, like to the car wash and the drive up window to Starbucks and the bank.

After the outing, she and I feel better, however, going back is okay because I’m clearly leading a boring life (She actually told me that)

You might see if you can do fun things with her in her room or the facility. That way, she will have pleasant memories of the facility rather than a place to be dumped while everyone else does fun things.

Its taken me awhile to adjust to my new normal. However, with her combativeness and incontinence (in my car and when we go out), and my difficulties doing the wheelchair transfers, this is much better than the arguing, the crying, and my angst.

An outspoken nurse asked me "why didn't I take Mother home for the weekend?" (From Respite Care) "Many of the other residents do".

Because.. besides the mobility issues, it would cause her much upset. It had taken much pushing, convincing & threats of Doctors & Police to even get in the door. Emotional upsets now took much time to recover from.

"Oh" she said. "I didn't realise. In these cases, better to stay put. Visit instead".

I did feel a little pang of guilt as I watched an elderly man transfer his elderly wife from her wheelchair into his car one day.

But Alva is right - not really guilt, but grief/sadness.

We use to take our step-mother out to lunch, we stopped. She just sits there doesn't say a word, can't decide what to eat and eats two mouthfuls and makes faces cause doesn't like it, yet wants a box to take it back, then she puts it in her freezer or fridge and never eats it.

No clue and most of time she would forget that we were picking her up and be in the dining room eating when we came there, although we called her 1/2 hour before we left.

Not worth it for her or us. She is not the person we knew. We had to adjust. Guilt? No reason to feel guilty we did not give her this disease. Guilt is self-imposed a total waste of emotions, serves no useful purpose, keeps one stuck.

1. Do not take her out of memory care.

2. Do not take her out of memory care.

3. Read 1 and 2 again until this sinks in.

Alvadeer … what a lovely way to put it..

Lrs123 … my motherinlaw called me friend too. That was ok … she knew someone cared.

one walk up and down the hall to the door and she began to fade and id leave.

once a week was enough. I tried two times once and shed forgotten who i was. Once a week shed recognize me ! Smile. Open her arms and say “im so glad you came.”