Life is an Adventure with an Alzheimer’s Patient

Kristina Chew’s post, All Adventure, All the Time, at Autism Vox about her experiences with her son Charlie got me thinking about the adventures of living or caring for an Alzheimer’s patient.  Our life with Mother and Auntie certainly became a new experience and an adventure.

However, the adventure had its positive aspects as well as its frustrating ones.  I look back, with the years separating me from the frustrations, and now see the rewards.  Time somehow has a way of filtering our the negative, if we’ll but let it.

*We learned to laugh at ourselves and circumstances we couldn’t control.

*We learned to laugh with Mother and Auntie instead of scold them.

*I learned to be two people…Jim’s wife and the woman Mother thought was stealing him from me.  She thought up various strategies to keep that woman under control.

*We learned to live in whatever moment in time Mother and Auntie were experiencing.  Those adventures gave us a sense of stepping through a time warp.

*I learned to sit with Mother in our living room and take time to watch the birds at the winter feeder.

*We even watched the people reflected in the sliding glass door (us) and wonder where they were from and why they were visiting us.  Sometimes Mother recognized them, so I “chatted” with people from her past!

Find the adventure in your life with your Alzheimer’s family member.  The frustrations, the saddness, the tiredness, the sense of being overwhelmed also will be there.  Take time to make enjoyable memories that will remain long after that person has gone and your healing has begun.

  Creating Moments of Joy for the Person with Alzheimer’s or Dementia by Jolene Brackey enables you to learn how to do this as well as journal those moments.