The characters of these two elderly women’s personalities were, flipped, upside down by dementia, translated…
When my mother-in-law was eighty-three, she was diagnosed as having vascular dementia, and my husband and I took over the caretaking of her, she’d, changed her originally mean looks, and became such a wonderful, and lovely elderly woman; she still remembered her six daughters and my eldest sister-in-law who was older, but she couldn’t, recognize me, who’s been living in her family for fifteen years to date, after months’ worth of interactions, she’d started calling me “older sister”, reason being, “You’re my kindness oldest sister!”
And, as my mother was sixty-five, she was diagnosed as mildly demented, the exact same kind as my mother-in-law’s, the vascular type, and, for the three years before, she had a spinal column infection, and had a surgery, and after the physical therapies, she still couldn’t, gain her mobility back, and her deteriorating health turned her into a very different person, from being kind and gentle, to becoming, easily angered and too sensitive, and every time I’d wanted to go home to be with her, she’d turned me down, “Don’t come back! Every time you came back, your dad would run out”.
The doctor speculated, that my mother-in-law’s dementia may have been caused by the minor strokes she’d had from before, reason being she had hypertension, as for how her personality altered, the doctor told us, that was, a rarity, but for the patient, and the families, this may not necessarily be all bad. As for my mother, maybe it was her hypertension, and her diabetes, causing there to be not enough blood flowing to her cortical, causing the blockages in the various lobes of her brains, which had in turn, made her demented; and her change, it may have been, caused by countless number of factors, and we can only, use even MORE patience to communicate and to accompany her.
she’d become, someone who’s, not her self from before…photo from online
My mother was eighteen years junior to my mother-in-law, she’d died at age seventy last year, and my mother-in-law will be ninety years old next year, and although she’d become, demented, she’s still, quite able. I bore witness to the progressions of these two elderly’s dementia, and I’d felt, that everything is not set, and the affinities we have, is quite extraordinary.
My mother-in-law was born in the war times, she’d followed her older sister and brother-in-law to Taiwan, and ever since, she’d, been living under someone else’s roof, before she turned twenty, she’d, married my father-in-law, they lived in poverty, she’d lost her husband in midlife, but because she is really stubborn, and quite harsh with her own children, and the first time I saw her, her unsmiling face, with her angular face, her cold eyes, it’d, made me fearful. And my mother grew up in a farming family, has a simple and optimistic mind, fell in love with my father after they met, worked together, to build up a family, and what she was most proud of was having a loving husband, and well-behaved children too, even as she’d turned sixty, she’d still carried that radiant smile of a younger woman.
losing more and more as the illness progresses…illustration from online
But, dementia was like a magician, done a number on them both, turned their lives upside down. My mother-in-law who’d, walked out of the magician’s box became, this quite little girl, always in smiles, and her children were, more than willing to, come home to spend time with her. As she and her children leaned together to watch T.V., my mother-in-law would turn her head, smile at, or patted her children’s hands, she’d forgotten, about the ailments she was overcome with for years on end. And, as my mother walked out of the magician’s box, she’d become, this old woman by twenty years, all she ever complained of, were her ailments, her pains, how heartless her husband was toward her, how he’d not, taken care of her, she’d replayed the sorrows and trials of her life like a broken record, and her elderly years became, like the never-ending nights, there’s no dawn breaking, and toward the end, the stars wouldn’t come out to greet her anymore.
Seeing that radiant smile spread across my mother-in-law’s face I was, reminded of the Buddhist beliefs of letting go of everything, setting oneself free, and I wished that she can, live out the remains of her life, comfortably like this; and as I walked that final mile with my own mother from the I.C.U. toward our home, I saw her lips turned upward slightly, looked like she was, smiling, perhaps, she’d felt that she was finally, freed by death itself? After she’d weathered through five years’ worth of dementia, I hope that my mother finally found peace in her death.
And from this, you can see, how dementia not only affected the elderly person’s behaviors, and bodily function, it can also, alter their personality characters, like this woman’s mother and mother-in-law, they’d become, completely opposites of who they once were after they were both, demented, and maybe, the way that dementia came to them, was what made this alter of personality, who knows???
Life, the Obstacle Course 