I took care of my mom for 13 years. We laughed together, took day trips together and I constantly tried to please her. 6 months before she died, my mom turned and looked at me and said "I hate to tell you this but I don't love you." That comment has haunted me since her death. I keep hearing it in my head and I've begun to feel unlovable. Did anyone else experience negative responses from someone with dementia that you were caring for that have stuck with you? How do you get past it?
I'm so sorry that you are dealing with this particularly harsh memory at the same time you are grieving the loss of your mother. I don't think I have the words to tell you how to forget what you heard or for it to not make you feel alone and lonely. I remember hearing Harry Belafonte sing, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child" and I imagine that is what you felt like when your mom said that. I also wonder what was the state of your mothers mind when she spoke those words that were so hard for you to hear. Perhaps she realized that she didn't know who you were. Perhaps she remembered something about love but couldn't put it together with you as her brain was no longer functioning in a way that would allow her to remember. Perhaps it was a loss that she was sorry about or something she thought she should tell you. Perhaps she saw how much you were caring for her and she felt it only fair to let you know. Perhaps she heard something like that on tv and was only repeated something she had heard. Perhaps it was something someone had said to her. I know it won't make those words fade for me to write these words but your relationship was much more than those few unfortunate words and was for a time much longer than those 13 years or that last six months. It has not been long enough for the last months to shrink to their appropriate size in importance. Those few words seem to weigh more than all the rest of your relationship, but that's for now. They still loom large in your mind. They will recede. My own mother has been gone for two years this month and it is just now receding and I have yet to be able to remember better times, times before illness and death. We go into a sort of trance in our care giving. It takes a while to come out of it.
I do know that for you to dwell on those words is not healthy for you.
You may have heard this story. An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
So turn away from those words and that experience and think on more pleasing times with your mother. Its hard to stop doing something. Easier to start doing something that pushes the other thing away. "I am love" could be a mantra you could repeat when the memory comes back. Something simple that you can repeat over and over. Therapy might help you as well. Hugs
Reading your post made me tearful. I am so sorry you have been thinking of these words. I know how much it hurts. But I hope you know in your heart it was the disease talking and not your mom. You were a faithful and dutiful daughter for all your life. Your mom was so blessed to have you caring for her.
I know we want to hear the words "I love you" from our parents. After my dad had his stroke, I too tried to make him happy. But it felt like everything I tried to do was not good enough. He would constantly wave me off or tell me no. He passed last year and I'm still struggling.
It's not easy to let the past go, but others have suggested to me to focus on the whole relationship. Think of all the good moments and try to let those ones that hurt go.
Take care of yourself. Please know you did do everything possible for her. And you did right by her.
My dad has dementia - and he says very hateful things to my wonderful step-mom (he thinks it is 30 years ago when my mom and dad were going through their divorce and he thinks my step-mom is my mother). My stepmom, on a logical level, knows this. However, it is hard not to be very hurt.
It might help to read up on dementia. I hope you can soon let this hurt go - it was not true.
My dad died of Alzheimer's and at the end of his life told me "I used to love you". This stung because I knew that he loved me and that I had been the apple of his eye until the last few years. These people gradually lose their brain function as the disease progresses but that doesn't mean they never loved you.
You've received a lot of good advice here. It is hard to move on after things people have said and done, especially when it's your Mom and you were so close. The best you can do for yourself, and for her memory, is to remember the good times. Push the bad back and eventually you will concentrate mostly on those good memories. I had an alcoholic father and my narcissistic mother is still alive (who I care for despite all of the past and present things she says and does). I could focus on the bad memories from both, but I chose to focus on the good in them. I recently read a statement "You bring out the best in yourself by looking for the best in others." If you need help working past this, develop a strong support system to talk about it so you can move past it. It's the most productive way to honor your mother and yourself. I wish you all the best.
THIS is what you remember.
It was the NASTY THIEF dementia who uttered that heart breaking statement.
Your Mom probably did not like the woman that was taking care of her.
To your Moms mind they are/were not the same person.
I bet when you were little there were times you told your Mom that you hated her. Did she truly think that you hated her? I bet you don't even remember saying that but all kids do at some time utter those words.
Forget that your Mom said those hurtful to you as she forgot and forgave you for saying the same words to her probably 60+ years ago.
Remember the Day Trips, the times you sat and had coffee or tea while talking about the trip you came back from, planning the next one or solving some problem.
Just like you don't dwell on changing her briefs, changing the soiled sheets, getting up at 3 am because you heard her try to get out of bed, don't dwell on one sentence that was said.
Recall the good not the hurt.
My mother died three weeks ago, in hospice care in a nursing facility, and although she (or the NASTY THIEF, dementia, as Edna317 so aptly put it) never said she didn't love me, she began to lash out in the last week of her life, ordering people out of the room and saying she didn't know them. I was frozen with shock when I came into her room a week before she died and she started yelling at everyone to get out. Mercifully, the hospice social worker was with me and took me firmly by the shoulders and out of the room and enveloped me in a huge hug.
Now, granted, even in her best years, Mom was capable of blurting out remarks that could sting; but being on the receiving end of the screaming at people to get out/telling a daughter, like you, who took care of your mom for years and did all sorts of fun things together can feel really devastating. I confess I felt pretty unloved, myself; then I realized Mom was just not in control of her faculties any longer. What has helped me a lot is going through old photos. Do you have a collection that you can sift through? Do you need to put together pictures for a slide show for her memorial service, or a book--or would it help to do it just for you? I have spent several days doing this for the first reason -- the service. I am deliberately picking out only ones in which she's smiling in the friendliest way and/or surrounded by her kids. It is another version of seeing the best in a person, I suppose. It is already helping me suppress the unpleasant, and move on. I wish you the best in getting beyond this and I know it isn't easy!
I got the usual insults and accusations as well. "How could you do this to me" When in reality, I'd done it FOR her. "I hope your kids never do this to you." Well, I'm my disabled husband's caregiver and I would never want to do to my kids what he's doing to me. If it's possible, I want to go to a nursing home and not expect my kids to give up their lives to do for me what I have to do for my husband.
Remember the good times you had with your mom. Dwelling on the hard times serves no purpose other than to anger and depress you. It's like picking at a scab. Unless you leave it alone, it won't heal. Best of luck to you. I hope you find some peace very soon.
Don't beat yourself up for something your mother might not even have known she said. The other night my DH said he didn't know who I am. It hurts - but he can't help it and your mother couldn't either. She might not have known who you were when she said that. The mind plays cruel tricks.
Pray on it and ask your God to take the pain away. I will pray for you also.
Huggers,
Linda
What an awful thing for you to have heard, all the same. Dementia is a vile disease.
You are blessed to have had a good relationship with your mother, to have good memories of it. Do you have pictures from some of the fun things you did with her? If so, why not create a collage? Copy the pictures on a colour copier, cut hem out and paste them on a poster board. (You don't want to use the original pictures for this, only a copy, so that you can preserve them). Put that poster board up somewhere you will see it when you start remembering the bad things she said. I know a surgeon who has an 'inspiration board' in his office near his desk. When he has a bad day, he spends time just looking at the 'inspiration board'. It reminds him of why he is a doctor. (He also spends time with his inspiration board before he's about to perform a difficult procedure.)
You might also benefit from Cognitive-Behavior Therapy. CBT helps people who are ruminating on bad thoughts and getting depressed. It's well worth it to learn the principles of CBT to stay emotionally healthy.
(I am the daughter of severely personality disordered parents and from a highly dysfunctional family. I was treated for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, causally related to all the trauma: severe verbal abuse at home and school, some physical abuse and neglect. What worked for me was trauma informed Modern Analysis. I was taught the principles of CBT during my termination period, when my analyst was teaching me tools I could use to stay emotionally healthy--without having to rely on someone else.)
Here are links to good explanations of what CBT is and how it works:
Psych Central:https://psychcentral.com/lib/in-depth-cognitive-behavioral-therapy/?all=1
Beck Institute FAQs (Dr Aron Beck initially developed this approach--it has evolved with the times) https://www.beckinstitute.org/get-informed/cbt-faqs/
Academy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists--keeps a registry of certified cognitive-behavioral therapists (the certification is rigorous): http://academyofct.site-ym.com/
Hope that helps
DoN
Long ago, because my mother was not really a lovable type I developed a thicker skin to ignore the nasty things she would say about me (and others.) I would guess that even before you started taking care of her she was a good mom. One statement, coming from, as others describe it, a broken mind, should be ignored. She might not have even realized who she was talking to at that time! My mother thinks my daughter is her cousin, not seen or talked to in eons!
So, revel in the good times and memories. Let that one slip go. You KNOW what times you had together and how she felt then. THAT is what is important and should be remembered!
I think you will find that most, if not all, caregivers experience this. Dementia is like having two personalities in one person. My wife would cuss at me, tell me she didn't love me, and more. But, an hour later she would not remember what she said. I hated it but I would give anything to have her back just to see that smile again.
I WISH I had 13 good years of memories with my mother. She didn't want me, didn't care much for me as I grew up and I spent so much of my life craving and almost begging for a scrap of attention. Nope. Now she has dementia and she is actually pretty sweet, but since I know it comes from her brain not working correctly, it kind of falls on deaf ears.
I'd hang on to the good memories. The bad will fade, in time, if you let them, if you don't they'll eat you up.
The "parable" of the Indian chief and the wolves is one I love--b/c it's simple and true.
Don't feed the bad wolf.
I also have a close friend who cared for her husband, who suffered from Parkinson's, for years in their home. During the day, she had caregivers stay with him while she went to work. Now this man was besotted with my friend -- he continued to pursue her even after she rejected his first marriage proposal -- so in his "right" mind, he was a devoted husband. But he started giving money to one of the caregivers and even told my friend that he was going to leave her and run off with the caregiver. My friend, who is no creampuff, could not tell me about it until he'd been dead over 10 years, she was so hurt, even though she knew that the "real" him wasn't saying and doing those things. Hang in there, everybody.
I suspect that in Suzie's case, her mom's image of her daughter was a much younger person, and she thought the daughter she saw was a random caregiver.