New behaviors from mom

shaunalaw

Hi all

I am new here. I live 5 hours away from my mom. She recently threw away her wedding rings including her beautiful 50 year wedding anniversary diamond rings my dad gave her. He passed away 12 years ago. She said since he won't come home and doesn't care about her she doesn't care either....the entire family is shocked....intellectually I know this is the disease but emotionally I am devastated and have a hard time suppressing my feelings when talking to her.....it is affecting my ability to concrete on my job as a trial attorney... so I reached out for support and tools..thank you for being here

towhee

Welcome to the forum. I am so sorry this happened. Unfortunately, as our loved ones forget, their brains tend to make up stories to try to make sense of their current reality. In her mind, the only reason she knew for a husband not to be with a wife was desertion, and her grief and anger must have been great. It is the same thing that happens when items get misplaced and the person with dementia thinks someone has come into the house and stolen them, or accuses family of stealing, or no longer recognizes their sibling and believes their spouse is cheating on them with their sibling. It is heartbreaking, and almost impossible to convince them otherwise, and even when you can they forget and go back into the mistaken memories.

Sometimes it helps you to have a little more information about dementia, so that these things do not come completely out of the blue. If you look at the top of this website you will see a category called Groups. Click on that and scroll down to a group called New Caregiver Help. There are a lot of good resources there. This link might also be helpful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVvi2X39Sio

.

towhee

Also, this particular forum does not get a lot of traffic. You might also post on either I Am a Caregiver or Caring for a Parent forums.

DeeinVT

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/69726/new-behaviors-from-mom

When I was there a couple weeks ago I was trying to find paperwork for her life insurance policies and other things. She has things in her strong box that are not important, like receipts from the grocery store or gas station from 2 years ago, but I found her POA paperwork and Will in a plastic bin under her bed that also had empty envelopes in it and stationary. I went through a bag of stuff that she was getting ready to put through the shredder, and found some of her insurance paperwork, but still no policies. My job in the last two weeks has been to contact all of her insurance companies, as well as other creditors, and fax them the POA and/or Advanced Healthcare paperwork so that they can speak to me. I'm having now everything important for those things sent to me instead of her, or at least to send me copies of anything they mail to her. I didn't think about going through jewelry or important things like that, though she has given a lot of that to us already because she was moving from a house to an apartment and then from that apartment to a smaller apartment. I'll have to talk to my siblings and see if there's anything important that they think I should try to find, and maybe open a safe deposit box at the bank. I'm already on her bank accounts with her and I have a separate account in my name only, so that I can limit how much money is in her account. She has a tendency to answer the phone and to give out her debit card to people asking for money, and it could be a scam and they could attach her account and take everything. It is very difficult, which is worse if you live further away, but I think even living nearby would be hard. We just never know what our person might do.