Mom has dementia and is in a memory care facility, she remembers me and my husband and kids and her sons and wife and kids. She thinks her husband, my dad is alive as well as her parents and her sisters. She still thinks she has her house and her life is as it was 25 years ago. And that she just played golf yesterday. She was in ALF for 6 months then moved to memory care and has been there for 9 months. It seems like everything I can talk to her about is off limits, they are either dead or she doesn't live there anymore. It's a struggle to find things to talk about. And I avoid anything that I may have to lie to her about. I told her once my dad had passed away and she cried for 2 hours. I will never do that again. Every visit is a challenge. We can only talk about the kids, weather, etc so much. Sometime she acts like she can't hear me and I have to repeat myself over and over again to until I find my self yelling at her. She is not hard of hearing, I think it is more that she is not concentrating on what I am saying and can't process it so she says 'I can't hear you'. I am kind of at my wits end. Every conversation is a struggle. I have tried talking about the past, but it always leads to me having to tell her a lie to keep from upsetting her. Any suggestions?
I tried asking questions about her past. This might be useful in some cases, but it wasn't with my mother. "Ma, did you churn butter as a child?" "Well, we must have. That is what people did then. But I don't remember who did at our house." She had a general sense of history but not her personal history.
I often brought a prop on my visits. A big bag of coins for her to sort. A basket of socks for her to match up. The beads from the craft room for her to sort by color. Coloring pages for us to both color. She loved cook books and looking through them gave me a chance to tell her what a good cook she was.
I think more important than the subject or content is the attention and the affirmation that the person with dementia is a worthy person to talk to.