Alzheimer’s Steals Recognition

When your family member develops Alzheimer’s, eventually the disease generally steals their ability to recognize you.  You walk into the room, and they think you’re someone else…a friend, your sister, her sister, her mother, a stranger. 

It gives you a strange feeling, like being another world or a time warp.  The person who has nurtured you no longer knows you.  This may be of short duration at first.  Usually this loss of recognition becomes permanent.

In a way, it’s also like a death…the person you know and love is there in body, but isn’t there in mind.  You experience a loss, a sense of grief without losing that person physically.

I learned to become the person Mother thought I was and to accept my adventures in that world.  It was easier to deal with the situation that way.  If I tried to correct Mother, to insist I was ME, she often became very agitated and even angry.

So I learned to enjoy the day, the moment, the activity.  Know you’re giving them pleasure even when they don’t know you.  Then sometimes there may be a glimmer of recognition or a response from them that makes it all very worthwhile.