My mother has been in a nursing home for a couple of years now due to strokes and Lewy Body Dementia which is not like other dementias in that her memory doesn't disappear from most recent and go backwards in time and there are some hallucinatory kinds of experiences and rearrangements of time and circumstance.
The nursing home caregivers are doing doll therapy with Mom. It seems to keep her focused and I assume, less lonely, less agitated. It gives her a sense of responsibility and control. She raised seven kids and took care of many grandkids over the years. She was proud to take care of her grandkids, to be able to help her kids in that way.
The way Mom responds with the "baby" is interesting. Though few family members of the dozens that live within ten miles of her visit her, those that have have been upset seeing her with the "baby" even though they've been warned. One thinks it's funny and rather than understanding that she sees the baby as a grandchild, he remarked with dumb humor that we have another sibling.
I live several states away from Mom but do weekly video calls with her, facilitated by the nursing home which I am so very grateful for. I try to visit her every three months which hasn't happened on schedule due to the pandemic and lockdowns. I write to Mom almost every day.
Mom has hearing issues and doesn't always wear the one hearing aid I guess she still haves though I don't know the history of that since I thought she lost both of them a couple of years ago. That, coupled with the dementia and maybe a life long predilection towards a slightly slower comprehension when communication is verbal and out of context from what is expected makes communication with her a bit more difficult.
Communication with Mom requires patience and simplicity, a focus on her and adaptation to how she perceives and responds. Some people think you just have to talk slower or louder or baby-like. That's not the simplicity I mean.
Like me, Mom seems to process and recall information better when she sees it such as the written word. Fortunately she can still read pretty well though the writing has to be clear and neat and of course, large enough. When I write to her I don't use cursive anymore. Hell, I can't decipher my own cursive scribble after a paragraph or two. My hand can't keep up with my brain. But printing each letter forces me to slow down. But even my printed words have to be neat, I've learned. For instance, one time when I was on a video call with Mom she read one of my letters to me and got to the end and said, "Huh, this one is from Jan P". Actually, rather than be upset about that, and focusing on another loss, it made me laugh to myself. Humor helps us cope with this journey.
Each day now when I write a letter (and for at least two years now I finish with each one with "I love you Mom") I sign it "Love, Jane" but as I do that I say out loud to myself, "Jan P" as I print out J A N E. The joke will be on me if I start actually writing Jan P since I know that sometimes our hands, as with the rest of our body, follow through with what the brain is thinking.
What I have found works nicely with Mom on the video calls and in person is to mostly be quiet and let her talk, even through the silences. She doesn't seem to notice the silences as awkward in the way we might. That's our own head space of anxiety wanting to yap constantly and our discomfort in dealing with someone who has changed so significantly, spelling loss for us and grief. I agree that it is hard to watch people we know and love have their live diminished before our eyes. More on that later. With the silences, I just wait, confident now that more will come from Mom. I find if I wait for it, additional thoughts get verbalized by Mom. I respond with simple things, trying to keep to what she may expect so it stays in context for her. For instance, if she asks an open ended question such as "What's going on with you lately?" I answer, "Not much" or "Staying busy".
This whole communication process with Mom, which is so changed from what I knew for most of our lives, hers and mine, could provoke so much internal focus on grief and loss. I nod to that. I give it it's due. It is true. Mom is 88 and has lost her independence and much of her ability to comprehend. She has many physical limitations to include the inability to use the bathroom safely alone or getting her hair fixed the way she wore it for 50 years. But I think there is still a rich journey here with Mom that I am grateful to be on with her. I am unafraid, fascinated and so glad she is getting good care, is not alone, and is not in pain. In fact, she is pretty chipper and shows much of her lifelong sense of humor which is sometimes blunt and cutting, making things interesting and unpredictable with her dementia and diminished hearing.
I have learned so much more about my mother, about what is important to her, things that happened in her life that I never gave that much thought to being her child and always in the receiving and needy mode as we tend to do with our parents. Even as adults, we still have kind of the unwritten rule, the expectation, that our needs are more important than our parents, that they have to take care of us. I think that is why so many adult children and adult grandchildren don't visit elderly and partially incapacitated loved ones. Whether conscious or unconscious, I think they just can't focus outwards, be curious.
I feel as if I have now discovered some of the depths of the person that Mom is, things that you don't see growing up with a parent. I feel these moments with her often produce rare gifts for me. I've always been in the position of visiting her, calling or writing over the years since I left "home" for college and jobs. When Mom was put in a nursing home against her will, I started the visits, the calls, the writing, wanting to give her company and comfort, wanting her to know she is appreciated and not forgotten. But as her child, and as I have discovered, I am still receiving things from her. that I think of as gifts. These things have transcended the usual, the gifts we children are accustomed to receiving. How do I really describe this journey? In a way, I feel we are into the PhD realm of child-parent relationships, if you will. I am getting glimpses into the human being that is more than what I previously knew of my mother. I am learning things that were, that are, important to her that I never fully appreciated, never really heard about.