Life: bits and pieces

Travels with my mother XIV: Lost in the mist

This is the fourteenth in my series called Travels with my Mother. If you’ve not read the first in the series, you might wish to have a look at that one as it gives the context behind these posts.

A thirty minute ‘window visit’ with Mum (short chat through a window due to Covid-19 visiting restrictions) left me feeling quite unhappy about her condition. She was even vaguer than usual and related a ‘travel story’ about a recent holiday that had not gone well. Mum’s imaginings are mostly about interesting, intriguing or amusing situations. This one was different: about a poorly planned holiday during which she had to find her own accommodation – an empty house – and awful food. (I probably don’t need to add that the holiday was not planned by her!) She was understandably glum as a result.

And, unlike most of her ‘travel stories’, I was unable to decide on the kernel of truth or reality at its heart. Perhaps it was a general unhappiness or discontented mood that had prompted it? There was nothing in past or recent events that I could connect it to.

I’m not sure why this affected me as it did but I struggled to accept this particular ‘travel story’. What made it harder was Mum’s demeanour during my visit. There are periods in which she’ll sit gazing vaguely around with her damaged, faded eyes.

The dementia is now impacting her speech, slowing and slurring her words. Many times she will search for everyday words that have been blacked out of her memory bank. When she can’t find a suitable substitute, her sentences might trail off into nothingness, or she’s left frustrated and silenced.

My mother, a woman rarely at a loss for words, silenced by her disease.

The unsettling thing is that, while she struggles to speak or relates a story about where her mind has taken her, she looks and sounds almost – but not quite – like my mother, Doreen. Her face, her voice, her expressions and mannerisms, are all Mum’s – except that sometimes, crucial parts of her are either missing or are invisible to me.

Conversations take on a surreal quality as though I’m talking to a woman pretending to be my mother.

And if I’m honest, I have to acknowledge that these times are hard and they don’t get easier.

It’s one of the hardest aspects of dementia for family and friends of the sufferer: witnessing the gradual crumbling of the person you love. It’s as if they are wandering into the mist and in danger of being lost forever.

Images by Michael and Pixabay at pexels

An irony not lost lost on me is that, when I returned home from this visit, I noticed that the forget-me-nots in the garden were beginning to bloom.

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