She accepted his death until recently. My father passed away 10 months ago. My mother, who was diagnozed with Alzheimer's about 5 years ago, seemed to understand that he had died and although you had to remind her of his passing, she seemed to accept it pretty well. Mom fell twice 4 months ago and needed to go into a memory care, assisted living facility. She seemed to adjust very well, however, suddenly she is asking to go see my father as she wants to take care of him. When we try to gently remind her that he died, she gets very agitated and upset and insists on going to see him. We try to distract her and sometimes it works, but more recently, it does not. Twice in the last two weeks we have had to cut our visits with her short because she is so agitated about going to see him and gets more upset by the fact that we are not taking her out to go see him. What can we say to her that will keep her from getting upset?
Although she seemed to understand and accept her great loss ten months ago, she has since lost the memory of that period. If she is now living in the period of, say, a year-and-a-half ago, then her husband is still alive to her. This has nothing to with her falls or the memory care unit. She has dementia. She forgets. It's what they do.
You can't take your mother to see your father. You can try giving her calm reassuring reasons for that.
Good luck.
I call what I do, Loving Lies, to say things like he has had to run an errand and will be back later, or, let's wait awhile and then we'll see if we can get ahold of him... maybe not those words, but something that is along the lines of what you feel your mom would accept.....
This is nothing as serious as what you are dealing with, but have recently stopped putting S's belt on when he gets dressed... when it's time to go to the bathroom it was one more thing that was frustrating him, so now when he is aware the belt isn't there, I tell him L (his son) is getting him a new one because the old one was too tight... it's working, at least for now.....
I am sorry your mom is missing your dad so and is unable to understand he won't be coming home.....but the loving thing to do would be to redirect her if at all possible.... hope this helps, it's just very hard for you to see your mom getting so upset like that.... hugs.