A Lesson in Patience
Submitted by mlichter on 2007, July 23 - 11:44.
Ask my daughter or any of my friends—even some of my co-workers here at Caring Today—and they will tell you that patience isn't a virtue I easily display. Traffic jams, delays that affect our meeting deadlines, the inability of someone to quickly understand a point in a discussion...all of these and more are buttons you might not want to push if you want to continue to see the sweet and friendly side of yours truly.
So, you can only imagine how I might react as my mother's dementia has continued to increasingly affect her ability to remember things we've just discussed. And although I initially found it amazingly annoying to continually repeat myself, I've started to find the humor in it. Fact is, I sometimes find it a relaxing diversion.
I call my mother almost every day and travel the 40 miles to see her once or twice a week. Since her social life now is quite limited, her contribution to the discussion is usually in the form of asking me what's new in my life. And even though I can draw from work, a relationship, and getting my daughter readied for college, when you talk to someone every day, you sometimes run out of things that are new.
Until recently, being asked what's new on a daily basis would have been one of those buttons on the patience-tester ("What could possibly be new? I just spoke with you 20 hours ago!"). But now, knowing Mom's memory isn't what it once was, I don't let it bother me. I know I can tell the same tale I told her the day before, and it will seem like a fresh story to her.
More important, however, is I have had to step back. I have had to come to accept that her asking me "What's new?" or to ask me for the umpteenth time what college my daughter will be attending come fall, is not something she does to perturb me. It is not her fault she cannot remember. There is no blame to be placed here. It simply is what it is, and I must learn to adjust to it.
And so I have. When Mom asks (for the next in what seems an uncountable number of times) what school Gillian will be attending, I simply interrupt my story, give her the answer, hear her say "Oh, that's right", and continue the tale I was telling with relaxed anticipation of the next Q&A break in the action. It's not that she's not paying attention. It's not that she is preoccupied with something else. It simply is that the blood flow to her brain is not what it once was, likely as a bad side effect from her having diabetes, and there is nothing we can do about it except participate lovingly in the experience so that she can get the most out of it. And if that means I tell the same story or answer the same question over and over again, so what? It does me no harm, and in one way makes my life easier, in that I needn't constantly come up with a fresh story. If I tell the same one, odds are she doesn't recall it. And if she does, she's polite enough not to lose patience with me for repeating myself.
Thanks, Mom!