I’m on the case early this morning trying to edge things in a positive direction.  What else can you do when your wife tells you she is fed up with not being able to do things that other people can do?  I didn’t think this was one of those occasions when changing the subject or diverting attention was the answer.  So I went for it and provoked further discussions on her aspirations.  It is possible, that once again, I misread her thoughts as it appears to have been a grief related aspiration: wanting to see her mother.

It is interesting that yesterday morning my wife was on a similar wave pattern.  She explained to me that she hadn’t slept well the night before because she had been thinking about her daughter who passed away a couple of years ago.  She was distressed that she couldn’t remember what D looked like and she found that really upsetting.  I listened for a while, shared experiences of my own, and talked of the happy times we had spent together.  I also reminded her of the photos that we had of D that could remind us of what a generous person she was.  I think I may have been closer to the mark yesterday.  Now I have an idea of what might have been going on this morning.

I think that M wakes up in the morning aware of the curse of dementia.   Perhaps her safety net is to focus on unresolved grief and there is a lot of that around..  Daily grieving becomes part of her psyche because she doesn’t know how to deal with the consequences of stroke: she just can’t bear to come to terms with it’s legacy. Some people would suggest that such denial is unhelpful.  However, I don’t think that taking steps to encourage her to face reality at this moment in time would be helpful.  For the time being working with my wife’s reality can only minimise distress and that remains my prime focus.