Great article. I feel for everyone who's in the situation where their parent wants to "go home" and means to a childhood home or to heaven.

I just wanted to add that there are also completely DIFFERENT situations, where a parent is in a nursing home or another facility, and when the parent says he wants to go home, he really does mean to the private residential home where he lived before he went to the nursing home/another facility.
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Nanas1
I couldn't have said it better myself! Thanks for writing some of what I was thinking!
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Doodlebug1938
How sad that your father disowned you since your mom's death. It's his loss of such a loving, caring daughter. I too wish that I still had my mom here. It will be 3 years this August and it seems like yesterday. God bless.
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Nanas1. Amen to that sister. My exact words to mom, while I would change her around 6 to 7 times a night, I enjoyed taking care of my mother. She would say to me, "you just loose all your dignity". I would say; "How many diapers did you change on me?". Her response with a grin was, "A Lot"! I came back with, "well I have some catching up to do". She loved it. Made her smile. Laughter is a good remedy for gloom and depression. I would give anything to have mom here. My father has diss owned me since her death.
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To all of you who look at being a "care giver" to their parents ! Did your parents have to make a choice to yes or no get up in the middle of the night to feed, and change you, as well as tuck you back in and sing to you so you fall back a sleep ? did your parents have a choice weteher or not to comfort you when you were sick, or hurt at all hours of the day ? Well, to all of you selfish and heartless people : it's payback time, and I wish your kids will treat you the same when the time comes. I hope some one understands my feelings about today's rotten and un appreciative adult money hungry(AND that is ONLY how they think about their parents..................................Just a piece of my mind, and food for thoughts to ALL OF US.
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My mother was recently in the hospital for the 5th time in the past two years. She kept telling me that she wanted to go home. I don't think she had alz or dementia, I think she meant home to Heaven. She was suffering in so much pain in the hospital. I think that some of these patients are really asking permission to die. I kept telling mom how much I needed her and she couldn't leave me. She hung on. The night before she passed, I told her while she was sleeping; "it's ok if you needed to go to heaven", which she considered her final destination and home. After only 9 days, she passed. She was only 76. God Bless all Caregivers out there. It's a hard job
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I think this is a very sensitive way to deal with the topic and redirect the discussion into more positive areas. When my mother was dying and semiconscious, she did not know me, her daughter, but kept calling for her mother whom she had not seen for many years.
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So hard to know what to say, I am going to try this with my 89 yo father and see if it will help, it is very hard to face this question, address it, and face it again 5 minutes later, like it was never heard before. Alz is so hard to deal with, I can't imagine how he feels, when he states, "something is wrong, I don't know what it is, but something is wrong. I don't know where I am at, or who the H*## I am." You can explain "the disease" all you want, but they still don't understand.
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Great article. When I read it, it felt just it was me with my mom when she was in the nursing facility. She blamed me for putting her there, and I would tell her it wasn't me but the doctor. She didn't believe me (even though it was true - they said that she could no longer live alone). Anyway, when I finally figured out to talk to her about it instead of trying to explain things to her, I realized that her "home" was the home she grew up in. She was going down "memory lane" I used to call it and it was better to visit her there in her world than trying to convince her to live in the present. Thank you for sharing your story and your insight. God bless you as you continue your writing in your blog "The Imperfect Caregiver".
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Word for word the post reflects my ground hog day experience that starts every day with my LO.

Conversing with a LO who has Alzheimer's is often like talking with your cat. Acknowledge, respond, be affectionate, develop boundless patience. Forget about rational responses. Show respect, your therapeutic fictional responses are allowed. ~DLMifm

I try to accept the mind is damaqed by Alzheimer's Disease. I Forget rational responses do not help. We can run ourselves ragged trying to rationalize the irrational behaviors

Easy to say, impossible to live with .."Take a BREAK often | You get to start over"

Jolene Brackery writes in Creating Moments of Joy: New found Response to "I want to go home" "When they ask to go home, they might be asking permission to leave this world. It should be OK to go home ..." "It is more difficult for a person with dementia to "go home"
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wow- word for word, exactly what we went thru when dementia started to take hold of Mom. So exasperating, and always in the evening (sun-downing) or during the night. Mom lived with us for 28 years, we had moved a few years prior to her condition emerged, we thought she meant she wanted to return to our former home... nope, out of frustration ut her in the car, drove back to the old neighborhood, tried to show her that another family lived there now, she said "This isn't home! I want to go home!" Made me crazy- she was trying to go "home" to Brooklyn, where she grew up.... we finally figured it out. There was no family left for her to go home to, in Brooklyn. So hard... ultimately we were forced to have her placed in a nursing home, she was already too bad off for assisted living. It's been almost three years, she just turned 93, and she's nearing the end now... so lucky to have had her for all these years, helped me raise my boys, was such a presence in our lives. Miss her the way she was, and will miss her more when she's finally really gone. Horrible disease...
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Helpful. So much of the conversation is what I have had with my mother. We try and try, but she is not in this world any more. Reasoning doesn't work. There is another key that must be used to unlock the mantras "I want to go home" or the obsessions etc. But it is frustrating because it is so normal a reaction to start off the response with a reasonable statement, which does not compute with them.
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