The Imperfect Caregiver

When it comes to care giving, sometimes love doesn’t enter the picture at all. People with dementia behave in ways that try us to our very limits. Waking each morning wondering what new hell this day will bring causes anxiety, resentment, grief, and anger.

You may have loved your parent, your spouse, your sibling, or your grandparent for many years, but when dementia takes over and the person you knew is gone, replaced by a stranger trying to escape from you, refusing to bathe, and accusing you of all kinds of terrible things, love can be forgotten. Sometimes it’s gone for only a moment or a day or two. Sometimes it dies leaving duty in its place and we grieve while they still live. Sometimes we pray for the end to come and are overwhelmed with guilt for even thinking such a thing.

However, it’s not death we wish for, we don’t really want that.  We wish for the pain to end.  Theirs and ours.

It is because we care that we started this journey.  It is because we care we carry on when we think it’s no longer possible, even when we wake up each morning wondering what new hell this day will bring.  For deep inside they remain who they once were and so do we. We rise and enter their world ready to keep them safe another day.  And that’s what love’s got to do with it.

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