Middle Age

I had a dream last week that I wanted to share here because once I realized what was happening in it, it gave me some insight into what some people might experience in real life. I won’t spoil it just yet. I’ll start with the dream and follow up later with my analysis.

In the dream, I was sitting in the bathroom trying to take care of business when the door opened without anyone knocking, and my son came in and started to talk to me. I protested that he needed to leave and that I had everything under control, but he insisted he needed to help me and spoke to me like I was a child as he slowly moved toward me while I got more and more agitated and desperate to get him to leave. By the time he reached me, I was angrily screaming in no uncertain terms for him to get out of the bathroom yesterday! However, he ignored my pleas. Then a moment later my wife came in, much to my relief since I thought that she would straighten out the situation out posthaste. I asked her to please remove our son from the bathroom, but much to my chagrin, instead of doing that, she also spoke to me in a patronizing fashion, insisting that I calm down and let him help me. We all know that the words, “calm down” rarely achieve their desired effect, and this case was no exception. She proceeded to tell me that I needed his help, but I continued to loudly protest. I was still screaming for them to leave when my oldest daughter came into the bathroom to join the melee. That’s when I really lost it and started not just screaming at them but pulling out every bad word that I had ever heard on school playgrounds, HBO and Cinemax, plus a few I heard at bars of ill repute frequented by sailors of even less repute. Words that almost always lead to violence in the right, or I should I say, wrong circumstances.

I screamed and cussed so badly that I immediately felt guilty in my dream. As I was internally berating myself over my foul mouth and unbecoming show of temper, I put my head down in shame. When I lifted it up again, I was not in the bathroom anymore. I was instead seated in my recliner in the den. The rest of the tableau went essentially the same as before though. As my son approached to help me eat, I protested that I didn’t need any help. Again, as before, my wife, and then my oldest daughter also joined in, all trying to help me as I lost my temper and screamed for them to leave me alone. In both instances, even while I was screaming I didn’t even quite know why I was so angry or why I was reacting in such a vile way. I again felt just terrible about how I had acted and what I said to people who were just trying to help, but I didn’t know why they were trying to help me when I didn’t need the help. Still dreaming, I tried to get up to leave the room but found that I couldn’t. Again, my son quickly moved to help me as my temper began to flare all over again. But then, mercifully, I woke up in a cold sweat, with much relief that it had only been a dream. I did my best to put the dream out of my mind, but I couldn’t. And so, although it was about an hour earlier than I usually rise, I got up to do something to get my mind off of it.

I usually work from home, but on this particular day I had made plans to meet some co-workers at the office and have lunch together. As I was making the twenty-minute drive to the office, my mind went back to the dream and what it could possibly have meant, and then it dawned on me. This is likely what my father had felt when we walked in to help him in the bathroom or after a fall, or if he spilled food on himself without realizing it. His dementia robbed him of much in his final years. In this case, it robbed him of his dignity and of knowing what was happening. He didn’t realize that he needed me to shower him or one of us to clean up the bathroom when he didn’t make it all the way there. He didn’t know that his shirt and the floor held half the food that had been on his plate. At times he didn’t even know who we were, so it is understandable that he would be disturbed by us walking in on him while he was naked. Looking back, when he got angry about these things, I can understand better now.

My father was never an angry man before Alzheimer’s. I could count on one hand the number of times that I saw him get angry, and even in those cases, not once did that anger end up targeting a living thing. Of course, there were walls and other inanimate objects were never the same again after he got angry, but even this was exceedingly rare. When he got angry after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, I tried to remember that this wasn’t truly him.

If you are dealing with a loved one with dementia who exhibits this kind of behavior, do your best to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand and forgive them freely when they lose their temper. Dementia can change their personality, both by the damage it does to their brain and by their inability to comprehend the new circumstances that spring from that. But again, this isn’t them. Hold on to the memory of them that you knew before while you try to enjoy what is left of them.

I heard a great piece of advice just the other day. It was meant for parents, but it works when adult children are taking care of parents too, with just a slight change. I’ll close this out by sharing that.

If you are having a tough moment with your loved one who is suffering from dementia and you are about to lose your temper, or cry, or run away, try to imagine that it is five years or so down the road. By then they have passed away, but you are granted just a few minutes to go back in time to be with them while they were still alive, but it has to be this very trying moment.

How would you treat them in that scenario? Would you be patient with them? Would you soothe them the best you could? Would you agree to anything they said just to make them happy for a little while?

Well, time travel isn’t possible, but you have been granted this moment right now because all we have is the present. Make the most of it, and then, a few years down the road when you really don’t have them anymore, you will still have that special memory of how you patiently dealt with them with knowledge of their predicament, and lovingly did your best.

J.B. Collum is a local novelist, humorist and columnist who wants to be Mark Twain when he grows up. He may be reached at johnbcollum@gmail.com