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I think this next part is incredibly important, and I'd ask that you read it with an open mind.

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So many people simply don't know how to cope with watching someone they love change because of dementia. Understandably, it's easy to become consumed by the heartbreak of it all.

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This is what we found helped us.

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Somewhere along the way, we realised that if we focused only on what dementia was taking away, we'd miss the moments it was still giving us.

 

So we chose, wherever we could, to meet Gma where she was.

 

We learned to laugh with her, not at her, and to embrace the wonderfully unexpected moments that became part of our everyday lives.

 

By allowing ourselves to do that, it wasn't all sadness.

 

That might sound strange to say, but dementia has a way of creating moments that are heartbreaking one minute and humorous the next.

 

There was the time we spent half an hour searching the house for her reading glasses, only to discover them sitting proudly in the fridge door above the milk (all 3 pairs!).

 

Or the day she looked at me with complete sincerity and announced that she'd decided it was time to stop driving. Naturally I was a little concerned, until I remembered she'd never actually passed a driving test. She'd been watching Traffic Cops on television and, in her mind, she'd become quite the motorist.

 

We laughed. Not at her, but with her.

 

Those moments became gifts.

 

One of the greatest lessons Gma unknowingly taught me was that there is very little value in trying to pull someone back into your reality when, to them, their own reality feels completely true.

 

Correcting every memory. Arguing every detail. Telling someone they're wrong over and over again. It rarely brings comfort.

 

Instead, we learned to step into Gma's world for a little while.

 

If she believed something had happened, we'd gently go with it. If she wanted to tell us the same story for the tenth time that afternoon, we'd listen as though it were the first. And if that meant spending an afternoon laughing about imaginary driving lessons or searching for glasses in increasingly unusual places, then so be it.

 

Those moments didn't take away the sadness of dementia.

 

They simply reminded us that joy still had a place alongside it.

 

Looking back now, I realise we weren't just helping Gma. She was teaching us.

 

She taught us patience.

 

She taught us perspective.

 

And perhaps most importantly, she taught us that kindness isn't always about having the right answers. Sometimes it's simply about meeting someone exactly where they are.

 

 

As Gma's dementia progressed, we began to see parts of the illness we'd never experienced before.

 

Like many people, I think we'd always assumed dementia was mainly about forgetting things. We soon realised it was so much more than that.

 

Every new stage brought challenges we'd never expected, and each one taught us something new.

 

One of those was something called "sundowning". As daylight faded and evening arrived, Gma's confusion would often become much worse. It was almost as though somebody had flicked a switch.

 

She never seemed frightened by us. She knew we were familiar, even if she wasn't always quite sure how. One evening she was speaking to her sister in America on the phone and proudly told her there was "a lovely young lad" making her a cup of tea.

 

That lovely young lad was me.

 

People often ask whether we corrected her.

 

The honest answer is... no, not usually.

 

Very early on we realised that trying to convince Gma she was wrong only left her feeling confused or upset. To her, what she believed was completely real. Who were we to keep telling her otherwise?

 

Instead, we learned to meet her where she was.

 

It wasn't always easy, and I'm certainly not saying we got everything right, but life became so much calmer for Gma when we stopped trying to pull her back into our world and spent a little more time stepping into hers.

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Another phrase that became all too familiar was, "I want to go home."

 

The heartbreaking part was that she was already there.

 

At first we'd gently remind her she was in her own house, surrounded by everything she'd known and loved for over 50 years.

 

It never seemed to bring her any comfort.

 

So one day, I tried something different.

 

"Shall we go then?" I asked.

 

We got into the car, and off we went.

 

We'd drive around the streets she'd known all her life, chatting as we went. After a while she'd begin directing me.

 

"Turn left here..."

 

"Right at these lights..."

 

Eventually we'd turn back onto her street and pull up outside her house.

 

"We're home," she'd say with a smile of relief.

 

To anyone else, it probably wouldn't have made much sense.

 

But to Gma, it made perfect sense.

 

After one of those drives, we walked up the path together. At just 4 feet 9¾ inches (she'd never let you forget the three quarters), opening her front door had become quite a challenge. She'd wrestle with the top and bottom locks, turning them together until, eventually, the door would give way.

 

Without fail, she'd step inside and call out,

 

"Hello, I'm home!"

 

The house, of course, was silent.

 

Grandad had passed away several years earlier, but for that moment, in Gma's world, he was still there waiting for her.

 

We walked through into the kitchen. She sat down in Grandad's old chair - the one she'd quietly adopted after he'd passed -and I put the kettle on.

 

Then, for just a moment, it was as though the fog lifted.

 

She looked down at her hands and quietly said,

 

"I'm sorry."

 

I asked her what she meant.

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She looked confused. Frightened.

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"I don't know what's happening to me."

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I remember trying so hard to hold myself together.

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I gently explained that she had Alzheimer's disease.

 

She asked me why.

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I told her I thought it might be partly genetic, as both her sister and her brother had also lived with it.

 

Then she asked me a question I'll never forget.

 

"Will I get better?"

 

Every part of me wanted to tell her yes.

 

I wanted to take away the fear on her face and make everything okay again.

 

But Gma had always been honest with me, and I felt she deserved that same honesty from me.

 

So I told her the truth.

 

No, she wasn't going to get better.

 

But she didn't need to worry, because she had me.

 

I'd be there to help her, every step of the way.

 

She nodded and thanked me.

 

Then, almost as quickly as she'd come back to me, the moment passed.

 

The fog returned.

 

And with it, the conversation disappeared from her memory.

 

Mine, however, never will.

 

It was one of the hardest conversations I've ever had.

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Not long afterwards, Gma needed the specialist care that we could no longer provide safely at home, and she moved into a nursing home.

 

Even there, dementia continued to surprise us.

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The gentle, kind woman we'd always known sometimes became frightened, frustrated and, on occasions, even angry. That wasn't Gma. It was the illness speaking.

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Rather than seeing challenging behaviour, we learned to ask ourselves a different question.

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"What is she trying to tell us?"

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More often than not the answer was simply that she needed purpose.

 

So we'd create little jobs together.

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I'd sit with a basket full of towels and a clothes airer beside us. I'd hand Gma a towel, she'd carefully fold it just as she always had, and place it neatly over the rail. While she concentrated on the next one, I'd quietly lift the first towel back into the basket, ready for her to fold again.

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We could spend the best part of an hour or two together like that.

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To someone else, it might have looked like we were folding the same towels over and over again.

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To me, it looked like Gma was doing something she'd always done.

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She wasn't a patient.

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She was still my Gma.

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Those moments taught me something I'll carry with me for the rest of my life.

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Sometimes the greatest kindness we can offer isn't fixing a problem.

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It's preserving someone's dignity, giving them purpose, and meeting them exactly where they are.

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