unsure if something I did backfired...

Mckangel

My mother has been in AL since early November (against her will, I might add) but she had begun having delusions and seemingly hallucinations.  My father died last February at the age of 94. I threw a small funeral together  hastily, there were not many people in attendance due to Covid, and he simply had no other relatives living. His hospice nurses came for which I am very grateful.  I put together a small photo album with pictures of him and my mother, the grandkids, ect. She didn't see it at the funeral as she was in quite a daze & was concentrating on talking to the people there.   A couple of days ago, I took the album with me to AL as my mother kept saying she wanted to go home because all her memories were there.  She looked through the album and seemed to enjoy the pictures and pointing out different things and did not at all seem upset. She even wanted to keep them there.  Yesterday, was a different story.  Her friend/sitter told me that I brought those pictures and it just tore her up.  It seems like "darn if I do, and darn if I don't.

jfkoc

Something I was told early on, everything is a crap shoot. You have a 50% chance of getting right.

Another thing shared with me, grief has it's own life. You have no control over it and you can not hide from it so please do not worry about the album. It was shared with love.

Judith

SusanB-dil

jfkoc, great advice as usual... I like that - done in love, you can't blame yourself for which way the outcome went from great to not-so-great.  so true, you just never know.   MIL has a 'switch'. One minute all is well, the next minute not, then may or may not flip back to just fine.   I'm sure that must have been disheartening for you to hear that had happened.

dayn2nite2

I'd get that album back or at least never pull it out again.  From another post of yours I get the feeling she wasn't the most positive person on the planet and with people like this, they will seize the most negative parts of any situation and harp on them.  OR they will put on a show while you're there and when you leave they are blaming you for something.

Keep everything light and airy, superficial as possible.

Mckangel

Thank you dayn2nite2.  I appreciate your reply. At the tender age of 57, lol, I feel my eyes are just beginning to open. Again, thank you for your input.

-Angel 

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

BassetHoundAnn

I don't think what you did backfired. Your mom looked through the album and it triggered some good memories. Maybe that won't happen again, but it helped one day and that was very good. With our loved ones with Alzheimer's looking through photos can one day trigger good memories and the next day it can trigger sadness or it can trigger nothing at all because they no longer recognize who is in the photos. 

When I moved my mom to AL I put a stack of photo albums in her apartment. We looked through them a couple times but they made her sad. She didn't want to see them again. Then the day came when she no longer recognized anyone in the photos. So I took them away.

When my grandmother had ALZ she would cut the people out of photos thinking they were paper dolls. Definitely something you want to avoid with precious family photos. 

My mom is now in memory care. Some old friends visited one day and brought a book of photos. My mom seemed to enjoy looking at them, but I don't think she recognized who was in the photos. I think a lot of her enjoyment was show-timing for her guests. 

So chin up! I think you're doing good!

Gypsy J

Thank you, that is sage advice. I am dealing with such a person, the glass is half empty. It is difficult to realize you can no longer just be yourself and have regular conversations. Even before the Dementia my DH would get on the phone with his siblings and the conversation was always about how bad things were going in his life, it used to make me wonder about our marriage since his conversations with them seemed such opposite of my reality. Over time I came to realize the in laws were all pretty much that way and I needed to be guarded with my comments

mommyandme (m&m)

Im thinking only take the albums when you can help her sort through them.  She might enjoy them more with someone familiar to them.  Don’t leave them there for her to try to decipher on her own (or with a caregiver that doesn’t know the family). Like the others said, there comes a time when our albums only created some type of anxiety for my mom so I stopped sharing them. They were good while it lasted but it didn’t last.  

All we can do is try, then accept and adjust to the new reality of our LOs since they cannot.