Dementia can be Too Honest

Recently I’ve wrestled with the slow erosion of where I believe I came from, not in the biological sense. By that I mean what I have understood my family foundation to be. As a child I felt secure and loved. The three of us were a strong and close family unit. I lived an independent and successful adult life and was always close to both of my parents. They were always the picture of a loving couple. We talked frequently and always laughed and I visited as often as possible. There was this solid, steady foundation in life that I never questioned. But now there is this puzzling contradiction from my mother, the Alzheimer’s patient, and it leaves me wondering if dementia can be too honest.

Through all the struggles in the early stages of my mother’s disease, I saw everything through my one steady lens. My father resisted acknowledging the changes in my mother’s behavior. He didn’t want to recognize an inevitable outcome and hugged mom spontaneously and often. My mother acted out in frustration with the fear of knowing what was happening. At times I almost observed myself struggle through every behavioral change even when it was a hurtful, full throttle assault on me. Through it all I tried to keep a wide angle lens on my family so as not to lose sight of how we got here.

A special day together

The most profoundly unexpected insight into a different reality happened about a year ago when I had my mother home for lunch. I was happy and had worked hard to give us a special day together at the house. The van service picked mom up and delivered her to the house. I greeted her with enthusiasm and brought her in in her wheelchair. Her favorite Beatles album played in the background and some of her favorite foods were ready for her to eat. I gave her chocolate milk. She seemed happy and used her feet to move herself around. For a while we enjoyed sitting together watching the boats and birds. Everything was good.

I needed to heat up the food for lunch before I brought her up to the table. But before I left her by herself, I brought out a framed photograph of my father and handed it to her. She took it and I watched her look at it very carefully. She studied the photograph very intently so I started to walk away to fix lunch. But then, from this woman who has been mostly non-verbal, my mother blurted out loudly and clearly, “I wanted someone else!” I was stunned and instantly heartbroken. What was I supposed to do with that? She just shattered my lifelong reality.

I sat down completely forgetting about lunch. Somehow this felt like a pivotal moment in my own existence and all I wanted to do was cry. My mother just confessed to wanting, and maybe even loving, someone other than my father? That’s not what I’ve witnessed all these years. Was it all a façade?

Should I believe that dementia can be too honest or that it deletes truth?

I believe that even though mom suffers from late stage Alzheimer’s, she can still subtly express herself with some truth and intention. She still communicates with me subtly but very clearly in non-verbal ways when she is present. The mother I’ve always known is still there, although blurry or distant or fragmented. Perhaps now she is living more from a place of her own truth than she ever has before. It leaves me confused. I don’t know what to believe. All I know is that I feel sorrow from the suggestion that she wanted someone else. I wasn’t prepared for a moment like this one and there is no erasing what she said. Perhaps dementia can be too honest. Or perhaps her reality has been destroyed too. What is truth from a dementia patient?