Experiencing the Joy of the Season Amidst Holiday Grief

Good bye or hello? How are you? How were you? It makes quite a difference in the minds and hearts of people with dementia, probably of the alzheimer's type. Do our caregivers see us as half full and the other half empty? Are we on the road which ends in a place where we are refered to (sometimes even in front of us) as an "empty shell?"

This disease is not a long good bye. We are whole people every day of our lives. We may be different people from day to day, but we are still whole people. We aren't saying good bye every day, we are saying hello. Won't you all please answer back appropriately? Won't you all resopond to us as if we were still members of the family, still the Dad or Mom, still loved, still entitled to our sense of self, dignity, privacy, and the same place in your heart? Because we don't talk, do you know for sure we don't know? Beause we don't hug, do you know for sure we don't want to be hugged? Because we act up, does that mean we don't still love and care?

No one questions the genuineness of your feelings? Should you look at the cause of them? The beliefs that we are on the road to nowhere; we are fast losing our ability to enjoy life, to grow as human beings (even if we have a cognative disease); to be a whole person every day until the moment we die; these beliefs create understandable stress in the lives of caregivers. Are they each and all true?

Please think about what you know and don't know about us this holiday season, and give us both a gift which keeps on giving.....your love and respect; your belief that with your enablement we can be a complete and whole person.

Richard 

 Thanks so much for posting.  This can really be a trying and emotional time of year - for many people for may reasons.

I hope your time with family and friends is safe and fulfilling.  Remember that you never need to go through this time of year or any other by yourself.

All te best, smm