When Your Parent Doesn't Know You Anymore: When Alzheimer's Separates You Forever

When your parent doesn't know you any more due to some type of dementia such as Alzheimer's Disease the emotional blow is nearly equivalent to that which comes when a parent dies. While you still know your Mom or Dad, his or her inability to respond or react to you , as you, can be extremely painful. To look at this person who has nurtured and supported you throughout your life and not be able to rely on that special bond of knowing is a challenge of love. To see the blank experession that accompanies your arrival replace the once fond smile is like a painfully bad practical joke.

For some people facing this kind of challenge at least initially seems beyond human endurance. Discovering how much you relied on your parents to look at you with the recognition of years of common experiences can be overpowering. It is not unusual at the outset for people to feel as if their parent is now dead to them and in a sense of course this is true. Yet your parent lives on and so does your need to continue to love them and care for them as well as the situation permits.

One way to cope when your parent doesn't know you any more is to try to think of the situation as a form of role reversal. In your earliest months of life you really didn't know, nor could you respond in any but the most basic ways, to your parents. As an infant you couldn't talk and you tended at least for the first few months to respond in basically the same way to anyone who was caring for you. You weren't trying to be difficult you just didn't have the mental capacity to do anything else. When your parent doesn't know you anymore the same situation prevails. They aren't willfully forgetting or ignoring you, their minds just aren't functioning in that way anymore. So it follows that just as your parents took care of you, tended your needs and loved you even when you couldn't distinguish them from anyone else, now it is time for you to return that kind of unconditional love.

Even when your parent doesn't know you any more you can still continue to spend time together. No the visits won't have the same payoff for you that they once did, yet you can be glad in knowing that you still have been blessed with opportunities to make your Mom or Dad know there is someone right there in the moment who seems to care very much for their well being.

When you visit a parent who doesn't know you any more you can still take advantage of the many things that you still know about their most heartfelt interests. You can sit and watch the birds together, read a poem or two, play some music that your parent once loved while you share time together. With patients who suffer from dementia it is impossible to predict what might spark interest or a pleasant memory. You have more chance than anyone else to guess right and bring some momentary happiness to your mom or dad. That in turn may lighten your load, but that is truly secondary to the plot.

When you visit a parent who has lost the ability to recognize you, there are some days when that inability can become a plus. Your visit becomes that of a stranger about whom your parent knows nothing. You arrive with no past baggage, no bad or good memories, a blank slate really. This means that there is nothing to keep you from just presenting yourself as the most upbeat, positive, happiness bearing individual you can imagine. You can do all the things that don't come natural to you. If you weren't the flower bringing type when your parent knew you, now you can be. If you were reserved you can be a little giddy. In other words because your parent doesn't know you anymore you can reinvent yourself in ways that you think may please him or her. In fact doing so may actually give you a bit of lift to as you evaluate what newly created personality traits or behaviors seem to be a hit.

But what I have learned through passing through this experience myself is that the most important thing to remember is that your parent in one sense is now lost to you for ever. You have every right in the world to grieve for that loss. But at the same time you have the option that many people never have and would kill for. While you cannot be on the receiving end of your relationship with your parent any longer, you still have been blessed with the chance to be on the giving end. When you consider how long you have been on the receiving end of kindnesses from your parents, there is a certain wonderful justice now in being allowed the luxury of more time to give back as much and as often as you can. Let yourself settle in to the fact that it's not about you anymore
and then rejoice in the opportunities still remaining to make it all about the parent who doesn't know you any more.