It’s been over 2 months since my Mom announced that she was in love. WHAT?? Sam and I walked into the dining room at the nursing home on a Saturday evening and found Mom, not at her normal table, but sitting across the room with a man. We sat with them while they ate and he told us how Mom’s smile had given him such joy and how she had made him want to fight the lung cancer that was destroying him. Something that I should have clued in on and didn’t…he said that there had been another woman that he had enjoyed spending time with and eating meals with but she had gone “home” from the facility. He missed her dreadfully and had tried to call her to keep in touch but to no avail. But, here was my Mom, smiling and friendly and ready to have a friend.
Three days later they were talking about how much they were in love and wanted to get married. They were holding hands and he was stealing kisses.
A short time after Dad passed away, I was told of this man who was coming there to live who was a retired minister. He was hoping to be able to start a Bible study there and it was thought that this might make for a good friendship as they had ministry backgrounds in common. For months they didn’t meet but now the time had come and ever since that time it has been an emotional roller coaster both for Mom and for me (and the rest of us who are close to this situation.)
At first it was both comical and sweet…this relationship seemed to bring a spring to Mom’s step and a bounce to his wheelchair and sparkles in their eyes. As a family, we thought, great, it’s good for her to have someone to share things with, to talk to and to enjoy a special friendship. Some of Mom’s physical responses to his attentiveness were appalling though, knowing Mom as I have, and realizing that if she were clear-minded, this wouldn’t be happening. It became apparent that her years of being happily married were driving her behavior – she was comfortable because this was what she was used to.
I must admit, though, that the Sunday after their first Bible study together in the nursing home, when she was relating to us about how wonderful it had been, saying, “oh, honey, I wish you could have been there to hear him! I hate to say it, but I think that he is much deeper than your Dad was” – I almost came unglued inside. Sam told me later that he knew I must have been very hurt by that comment and that I probably was biting my tongue. (He knows me so well). Although I was astounded by this comment, I also realized that this was NOT my real Mom speaking but the woman whose incredible mind had been sabotaged by dementia. She’d known this man all of about a week, maybe two when she made this “incredible” discovery of his great “depth”.
The psychologist on staff there told me that I must understand that they are like 13 year olds and I must be careful not to object to this as I would push them closer together. I said, “this is NOT my mother” and he replied, “no, she is your 13 y/o daughter”. (And I said to myself, “my 13 y/o daughter never acted like this). ☺ Therefore, I would tell her that I was glad that she had such a special friend and that having a friend was good and that there wasn’t anything wrong with friendship that meant so much. (Get the recurring “friend” word?) One day the hairdresser in the facility told me that Mom had told her that she was giving her kids a new daddy and they were just going to have to get used to it.
After a few weeks I noticed that Mom seemed very worn out all the time and the spring in her step wasn’t so springy and she seemed depressed. (I was increasingly unhappy with this relationship as there were many indications that this man was becoming quite controlling and bossy and Mom is very much one who never wants to hurt anyone’s feelings and will go along with things often to avoid that.) One day when I arrived for a visit I found the two of them walking/wheeling in the hallway and we went to Mom’s room to visit. As I tried to ask Mom questions, he kept butting in and talking and Mom never had much of a chance to say anything to me and I wanted to throttle him. He dominated the conversation and I discovered a lot of things (through his talking) that made me even more uncomfortable about this relationship. Like the fact that he had been married 4 times, two of which ended somewhat violently. Oh, did I mention that he has lung cancer from smoking for 40 years and he gave up chewing tobacco for her?
Some of the things that he was saying made Mom’s eyes pop a little but otherwise she said very little. I left that day feeling quite discouraged and frustrated and wondering what was the right thing to do. Two days later I decided to take her to lunch to get her out of the facility and somewhere that we could talk uninterrupted. While we were out I asked her what she saw in this man. I said that he was so different from Daddy. I also told her that I had noticed that she didn’t seem so happy anymore. She started to cry and told me that she had been thinking a lot about Daddy lately and that she wasn’t happy and that she felt like she was being bossed around but that she didn’t know how to get out of it. I assured her that she wasn’t alone and that if this was what she wanted, I would help her break it off, as would the staff. When we arrived back at the nursing home we stopped at the office of a staff member to talk and I asked Mom to tell her what she wanted us to do and she told her “I want help to get away from this bossy man”.
She seemed incredibly relieved and for many days their paths didn’t cross. He became very depressed and refused to go to his chemo treatments. One well-meaning staff member, who obviously wasn’t aware that they were not together, went to get Mom to see if she could convince him to go. Later that night I got a phone call from Mom to tell me that she had met someone new and that she was so very happy and was in love. I called the nursing desk to inquire as to who this new man was. She had no idea as no one had seen her talking to anyone new. That visit to his room must have reminded her of the “nice” man from the beginning of the relationship.
The next day, after doing some good sleuthing, my niece Sherri and I discovered that she had to be talking about man #1. She couldn’t tell us his name, said it wasn’t the first one, when we said his name and told us she couldn’t remember his name because she always called him honey. She told us that he was a preacher, etc., etc., and everything was what we knew about the first one. She was convinced for a couple of weeks that there were two different men…a nice spiritual one and a bossy, controlling one and she began spending time again with the nice one.
All this time I am being told, with great assurance , that Mom’s “friend” is of sound mind (as well as being 12 years younger). Therefore, we were getting concerned for her, as she is definitely not. As a family, we were concerned for her safety, the possibility of her being taken advantage of and she wouldn’t remember. We addressed those concerns with the staff and we jointly decided to place some guidelines and boundaries. We told him that she was NOT his girlfriend and they would have to be just really good friends. They could NOT kiss. At this point Mom looked up with an incredulous look on her face and said, “I don’t think that we have ever kissed” to which he responded with a shocked expression. We (the social worker and myself) told him THAT was why he couldn’t kiss her. He agreed to the boundaries because he wanted to still be able to see her. She just wanted to be able to continue to Bible studies with him and she told me that if just one person came to the Lord that would be important. I told him that she was drawn to the spiritual part of him and she wanted to be a part of that with him. The fact that we were even able to have this conversation with her in attendance testifies to the fact that she has serious clarity of mind issues.
Since that conversation we have bounced from wanting nothing to do with him to loving him and talking of marriage and being disgusted and worn out by him and back to warm regards. It has been, as I said, an emotional roller coaster both for her and for me.
I read a comment today by someone talking about the wonderful mother who raised her who is now a confused person in the grips of dementia. She spoke of how hard it was to watch and realize that this was no longer that same person who raised her. In other writings on my blog I have written of grieving for my mother. While her body is still here, her mind is often not. There are definitely times when I can enjoy her company and almost believe that she is still here. Several weeks ago I found myself, on a couple of different occasions, wanting to pick up the phone and call my Mom in Maryland to talk to her about my Mom in the nursing home. (My Mom in Maryland hasn’t been there for 8 ½ years.) A very strange experience!
On Valentine’s Day, we read to Mom love letters from Dad that he had given to her in the last years of his life. Beautiful, heartfelt, promises to love her for eternity. I’m so thankful that he is not here to see what’s happening. It would break his heart. She still loves him so much but in her confusion she is playing it out at times in her mind with another.
Last week, after having been frustrated with him, she called to tell me how in love she was and she was talking of marriage again. Knowing that her concept of time is very limited, I reminded her that Daddy hadn’t been gone that long and that it was often advised to not make any serious decisions too soon after losing someone who had been such a vital part of your life. She responded that she remembered hearing that before and it was wise counsel. By the end of the week she was trying to get away from him again by hiding in her room because she didn’t want to hear all the stuff he was telling her about himself.
I have a cousin who says quite frequently, “you gotta laugh or you’ll cry” and that is what I try to do – laugh, that is. We try to find the humor in the situation. There are many days that I feel like a red rubber ball bouncing along or maybe a ping-pong ball pinging back and forth across the net.
There are times, like right now, when I feel like I should have some sort of wonderful spiritual application in all of this and I am just not finding it. It’s like my spiritual side is hiding underneath a pile of wheelchairs, walkers and Depends. I know God is here, I know that He loves me and adores my mother. I know that He is using her as she continues to shine Jesus to the people who care for her and people she lives among. And I know that God made a way for her to be where she is as hard as it has been for me at times to rest in that. I also know that emotionally, these past few months have been quite challenging as I struggle to find my own way while I strive to protect and watch over my mother.