beyond cinderella

I went to visit my mother today and found her sitting alone in her wheelchair at the end of the hall near the nurses station. When I approached her, and bent down to give her a hug, she grabbed me and held onto my neck and said “oh Cindy, you got here just in time.” I asked her what I was just in time for and she said “they are going to kill all of us and we have to wait here and not move.” I asked her who was going to kill them and she said “we are all going to get killed right now and there is nothing we can do but sit here and wait.” With her dementia, this was Very real to her and she was VERY, VERY, upset. She said if she thought I was out there in the middle of all that she would have been even more scared than she already was.  I told her everything was going to be fine and told her that I was going to take her back to her room so we could visit.

When I got mom to her room she said ” you just don’t know what all is going on around here and it’s not safe for anyone to be here.” I noticed her roommates TV was on and the roommate was not in the room.  That TV is on every time I visit my mother and my mother has told me that the roommate leaves it on all day and night. As I sat there trying to calm my mother down, I heard the news broadcasting events of the attacks in Paris, and realized that my mother must have been listening to that news over the past couple days and translated that to the care center where she lives is being attacked and people are being killed there… So I asked the nurse if we could turn the TV off, which she did, and the nurse agreed that my mother might be hearing the news over and over, and with her dementia, she thinks it is all happening at the care center in real-time…

From the doorway of my mother’s room, she can see across the hall, and out the window of the resident across the hall from her. Outside that window is a storage lot for the care center. Beyond that, is a two-story apartment building, and my mother can see the upper floor balcony of that apartment building, and people that live in the apartments walking back and forth on that balcony as they come and go. I can clearly see that the building is an apartment, and the people walking on the balcony live there… However, my mother is convinced that the people on the balcony are soldiers, and they are watching the care center residents, and are ready to kill them at any moment… She even told me today that yesterday they had Jesus hanging on a big cross out there in the lot all day long. With tears in her eyes, she said “I just think that is awful, don’t you?” What could I say? There is no reasoning with my mother now. She is convinced that what she thinks she sees is real now, and any attempt to try to explain that what she thinks she sees, in reality just isn’t, just upsets her even more. So all I can do is listen to her and try to calm her as best as I can…

Today, in my attempt to calm her, I said “mom, when you get scared, or anxious, you know you can always just say your prayers and focus on that to help you calm down.” She said “I do, every morning, when I wake up, I look at the picture of Jesus on my wall and say, now listen, today has to be a good day because I can’t stand all this commotion so if you help me I’ll help you.” OMG, I can just hear my mother saying that to Jesus… and I’m sure he smiles and just listens…

Stay Tuned!