His anger usually only lasts one day because maybe he realizes the absurdity and he apologizes, but what is the best response in the moment to the situation? Ignore the untrue accusations and his feelings of anger and betrayal? Stand up to him? Deny everything that is untrue? Laugh at the absurdity? I know reasoning doesn’t work well, but some of it does sink in later.
Of course some of this depends on the person and the degree of memory loss. Mine has vascular dementia, and he has a lot of mental capacity still to remember things that happened earlier in the week, but not what the weather is like or things that happened 5 years ago. It seems like random memory loss.
What response have you found that works?
Yesterday and today he threatened divorce. I told him I’d call the attorney for him. That works yesterday. Today, it didn’t work. So, I asked him who would care for him. He went through options (so sad to listen to because there aren’t any good ones). Then came to the conclusion that he would have to die, and with moist eyes asked me what he should do. So sad. So I told him I would love to continue helping, but I needed free time every day to go out. He was ok with that. Then, we went out to the car together.
His dementia has progressed a lot in the last 3 weeks, so I don’t know if he’ll remember our “compromise.” But, it worked. Sigh.