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Trying To Cope With Loved One's Dementia By Donald M. Murray, Globe Correspondent November 16, 2004 This morning, Minnie Mae was smiling in her sleep at Kirkwood Corners Assisted Living Facility. She was, for a moment, the young woman I married 53 years and 10 months ago. I held her hand as I had finally dared to when we went to the movies for the first time and then she awoke laughing, pointing to the dogs running in circles around each other. There are no dogs here. We talk, and I try to understand the strange and different lands she inhabits. Then, suddenly, like the undertow at Nantucket that captured me for a moment when I was a boy, I feel what I thought I had accepted and put away: this is the way it is. The dementia we had both feared has infiltrated her brain. There is no cure. This is the last of the many marriages we have shared. The good days are often the worst. I feel hope when there is no hope, cures when there are no cures, escape when there is no escape. I feel I betray my wife if I think of what I know she wants, the final comfort of death. Her brain protects itself. Minnie Mae is many places, back in school in Kentucky, working in the Pentagon during our war, a child, a mother, a baker, a spy, a dog trainer, but never what she feared most, a victim of dementia. A feisty woman all her life, she now lives a Zen-like existence of calm content. Her complaint at Kirkwood Corners is that the staff cares for her more than she deserves. In the dreaded nursing home Minnie Mae so feared, she has found an unexpected peace. There's nothing more I can do for her than visit, becoming for her -- I hope -- a man she rarely knows, but a presence who cares for her. I am left to make a friend of selfishness. It isn't easy. I became comfortable as a caretaker. Her needs become my obligation and unexpectedly my pleasure. I found I enjoyed -- most of the time -- giving her the care she could no longer give herself. We developed a new companionship with its own demands, pacing, humor, as together we fought a delaying action against Parkinson's. There could be no victory but there could be an hour by hour, day by day, staying action. Now I must march to my own drummer. I need to be strong if Minnie Mae, my daughters, sons -in-law, grandchildren, friends need me. Hardest of all is to admit I need to pay attention to the personal needs I put aside while responding to the ever increasing needs of Minnie Mae. I'm trying but I still wake each morning expecting to find Minnie Mae sleeping beside me as we did for almost 54 years. SOURCE: The Boston Globe, MA http://tinyurl.com/6b7jr * * *Murray Charters <[log in to unmask]> Please place this address in your address book Please purge all others Web site: Parkinsons Resources on the WWWeb http://www.geocities.com/murraycharters ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn