How after dementia set in, you were able to, relate to your own, mother-in-law more, intimately ever than before, something positive that came, of her dementia, I suppose…translated…
My mother-in-law and I, we shared that very, deep, affinity, we either lived under the same roofs, or that we lived, within ten-minutes’ of walking time to one another’s homes, and naturally, you would think that we’d related to one another like mother and daughter.
My mother-in-law is a traditional housewife, set up the rigid rules of division of chores in the household. If the daughter-in-law greeted the in-laws in the early mornings smiling at them, do the daughters-in-law seem amicable when they got home from work, and started making the meals for everybody in the families, it would, cause the elders to react. Being a working mother, raising my kids, and my career already had me burned on both ends, I’d only asked to not offend my mother-in-law in anything that I’d done, nothing more, I’d never played coy toward her, nor shown any acts of intimacy toward her. And, even though we’d, interacted courteously toward one another, there’s, that gap between us.
As my mother-in-law was diagnosed with dementia, we interacted more often now. With the changes in time, my mother-in-law’s mental age regressed to that of infancy, and, this caused something to change in the way we relate to one another.
That day after lunch, the hired help before she went out to shop, took my mother-in-law to bed for her nap, while I sat by her bed, reading, and suddenly, my mother-in-law made smacking sounds from her lips, saw that I leaned on top of her, she’d, extended her healthy right arm, pressed my cheeks to her, then, she’d, puckered up, “muah!”, left that, saliva print on my right cheek.
She’d flashed that, sly, happy smile of hers then, like stating, “Aha! I got you, didn’t I?”
And just like so, on a rainy afternoon, my ninety-five-year-old mother-in-law, lay in her bed, extended her arms toward me, puckered her lips, used the childlike expressiveness, stated to me, “hug! Kiss, I want kiss!”
I’d, wiped away the saliva she’d left on my cheek, and suddenly, I’d, missed my own mother who’d passed many a year ago then; and I am, more than grateful, that as I entered into my elderly years, I still get to, feel like, a daughter.
And so, this, is how the temperament changed in elderly with dementia, they may be strict, rigid, tough, disciplinarians when they were still young, but as they grew older, became demented, you’d, found them, to be easier to get closer to, and, something’s changed, in the way that the two of you related to one another, you’re now, able to, get closer to the elders you’d once felt that huge gap between with, all thanks to, dementia!
Life, the Obstacle Course 