Like he had to reinvent the world

7/02/2017 Syl 0 Comments

It's half a year now, since he left the house, and I'm still dealing with the peculiarities of his dementia.

The 115 pairs of new socks have found a place, the enormous piles of blouses too. But I'm still dealing with the chaos he's created in the world of money.

I tried to be polite and kind when stopping memberships he didn't need anymore.
I've got plenty of bills over the past months of memberships he's told me he's stopped.
I tied to explain the situation and most of them expressed understanding, stopped the whole lot and that was it.
In fact only the workers union has no consideration at all. Can you believe it? They are there for the wellbeing of people, and they care for nothing at all. I don't have the money to pay them, as simple as that, but they want payment, even though they delivered nothing, no service, no magazine, nothing.

Then today I suddenly realized why they all complained the automatic payments were returned by the bank, even though I didn't do anything.
I think he has withdrawn the permission for automatic payment with the thought that they would understand membership has ended.

I know it doesn't work that way, but he didn't.

Dementia is a process which is very individual.
We're here with a nursing-student and a psychologist, so we saw the process grasping him.
The forgetfulness, the loss of decorum, the mood swings, the repeats.
He thought the world turned around him. Created rules in his head and expected us to act on them, even when we didn't know those rules.
Sometimes it was possible to talk with him about that and his reaction would be: 'It's a better way of dealing with things.' Like he had to reinvent the world.

But he had.... he had to reinvent his world, because he didn't understand the rules anymore. Partly because he'd forgotten them, and partly because he couldn't control them.

So let's see if cleaning the chaos is a bit easier knowing this.


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