Not Home for the Holidays – Celebrating in the Nursing Home

“You’re not bringing your mother home for Christmas!” a friend exclaimed, after my mom moved to a nursing home. 

“No,” I replied, “It’s too confusing for her.”

After discussing the situation with the staff and assessing Mother’s condition myself, I never took her back to our home from the nursing home.  In her case, she was 275 miles from her home because I had to move her to mine in another state.  Mine never became “home” to her, and she really couldn’t understand why she had stayed with Jim and me for several months.

Living a Life in the Past

By the time she was in a nursing home, she had transported herself to a former life.  Bringing her to our home would have been very confusing for Mother.

So….we celebrated holidays with her at the nursing home.  The staff there planned festivities, special family dinners, New Year’s parties, Mother’s Day buffet, Thanksgiving dinner.  At first Mother thought we took her to a fancy restaurant when we all dined in the home’s gaily decorated activity room.

When the grandchildren and I joined her for parties, she tapped to the music, wore fancy hats, enjoyed tea and cookies.  “What nice children,” she remarked and smiled at the festivities.

I realize Mother enjoyed these times, even though she might not know where she actually was.  We often attended parties of the past (in her mind) and visited people she once knew. 

Your/Their Home Isn’t Always Best

If I had insisted in taking her the 20 miles to our home and had her join our celebrations, she may have become very confused.  She had developed her comfortable, familiar world at the nursing home.

Therefore, don’t feel you must take your Alzheimer’s family member to your home, to her home, to a relative’s home, or even out to eat if they have gone beyond the present into the past.  They actually may be happier if you joined them at the nursing home, as Mother was.

I look back on these times and remember them with peace and happiness, too.

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