DEMENTIA

Dementia is a strange partner.  I keep reading that they get along better with a scheduled life.  How can that be?  They can’t remember what they did 10 minutes ago; how can a schedule help?  I don’t know the answer to that but let me tell you, I know it is the truth.  We get up, read the newspaper; he will read me the same thing two or three times. We eat a simple breakfast, he takes a nap.  About 11:00 we go to McClains for lunch.  Come home and he has another nap – a long one.  Either watch TV or listen to music.  Have cereal or soup or a sandwich for supper and go to bed early.  I paint, sew or work in the garden; so I am okay with this. 

Sometimes I fix lunch at home.  (We have good food; we’ve had a lot of fresh asparagus out of the garden this spring.)  He has his afternoon nap but it is not the same.  He is unsettled.  Things are not right.  I don’t understand. 

The experts also tell me that they don’t do well with moves to another home.  They never adjust; they never feel like the new place is their home.  They start to go downhill faster.   Thinking we need to keep the house in shape for the time we need to move closer to our children, we have done a few things.  Last summer we had the retaining wall worked on.  This summer I plan to have the sprinkler system worked on.  Will we need to stay here and not move?  Who knows?

 I hate the thought of moving for myself – leaving my friends.  And I love living in a small place.  I tell myself that I don’t like not knowing what is in the future.  Then I remind myself that we never

know what is in the future – even when we think we know.  So what is different?

I seem unsettled tonight myself.