I mean, if I'd forgotten that my whatever was dead, I'd like to be reminded. Not humored. Because that's so dehumanizing.
And if I'm so far gone that I can't handle it, I'll probably forget about it all, fairly quickly.
Or if you can't deal with the upset, just distract them.
Keeping someone trapped in this grief-loop is cruel. It's far better to just lie.
Many years ago, I turned a girlfriend on to LSD. She loved it, and wanted more the next day. I told her that she ought to wait a few days, for the tolerance to fade. But she was adamant.
So we did maybe 2-3 doses, and she was still unsatisfied with the peak. And -- dumbass that I was -- I suggested that we smoke some marijuana.
That was a serious mistake. Because our short-term memory dropped to 30 seconds or so. I was cool with that, staring at the patterns in everything. But she was not. So I spent perhaps 3-4 hours reminding her that she was just wasted on acid and dope, and that she'd be fine tomorrow.
And she was. Except that she was no longer my girlfriend.
But whatever. Maybe you could have just reminded your grandfather that his short-term memory was hosed. And then assured him that you'd be back next week.
>And if I'm so far gone that I can't handle it, I'll probably forget about it all, fairly quickly.
Some people with dementia are absolutely convinced they're still in their mid-thirties. They think that their middle-aged children are still toddlers. They don't know why they're trapped in this strange place full of strange people, they just want to go home to their wife and kids, they want to go to work, they want to go for a beer with their buddies.
Imagine waking up tomorrow to discover that you're 40 years in the future, you're locked in a care home, your wife is dead, your friends are dead and your children are strangers. You look in the mirror and don't see your own face, but a stranger with wrinkled skin and missing teeth. Imagine that shock, that grief, that horror, repeated every single day for the rest of your life. Why am I here? What have they done to me? Why won't they let me see my wife? Why am I here? What have they done to me? Why won't they let me see my wife? No change, no progress, no learning, no acceptance, just an endless Groundhog Day of fear, confusion and grief.
I have a fairly dark imagination, but I cannot imagine a worse torture - to experience the worst day of your life, forever. Lying is the only humane thing we can do. Give Mr Q. a mop and a bunch of keys, tell him that his long-dead wife has just gone to visit her parents, let him believe something, anything better than the nightmare he is trapped in.
But mostly I laugh about it. Or listen to Turbonegro's "All My Friends Are Dead" or "Hell Toupee".
I get that I'm atypical. ADHD and bipolar, or whatever. And/or maybe too much acid, back in the day.
And maybe that will change when I truly hit dementia.
That's what I thought, too. But it causes severe, and pointless, suffering, which is cruel.