STEPPING OUT SIDE THE BOX

While stepping in among the perils and minefields of caring for a loved one, I have long learned that it is nearly impossible to try to take a loved one out of their box and make them climb into mine.
 Oh, it may start out as being successful! The tragedy is that as ones world is shrinking mine has/is expanding.
As something is grasped today, that something may be eluded tomorrow. Preferences escape.  Empty boxes of cereal placed in random places waiting to be transported to the recycling bin.
It is a recipe for a volatile relationship, especially if caring for ones own loved ones.
We all want to keep our private domain and maintain our own little corner of paradise.   I believe that concept is one of the reasons we may turn down the help we so desperately need.
While our concerns mount, we try to pocket the odd remarks here and there, something forgotten that should have been remembered, confusion of plans or entries on the calendar when they have changed, or losing the car in a parking structure. We want to chalk it up to approaching THAT senior age.
The tendency is to bat away clue after clue that something is happening. 

My first encounters with the cognitive and memory test several years ago while care giving,  can give an indication of what may be going on, however, with some there may be no obvious sign of cognitive impairment at present to outsiders.

MY LADY -2010-Better is a one day in God's court.

I have an over-developed sense of the melodramatic at least on the inside and as time progresses it becomes apparent that behavior alters, subtly at first, and then more obviously.  All the endearing qualities that you enjoyed slowly disappear and confusion sets in and becomes more evident.
One redeeming quality of this disease is that it appears to protect the loved one from understanding just what is happening.
Many times, I resent the fact that I have to make so may decisions.
Then there are the obsessions brought on by dementia, whether it be with tissues or the latest collapse of personal hygiene.  Their movement becomes slower and thinking is more ponderous or more frequent visits to the bathroom, every ten minutes.  Fighting with the night clothes and midnight romps down a hallway.  Digestive systems taking full revenge.  Eating slows down.
Their world continues to shrink as mine says "stay in their BOX!"  They appear to be the happiest, and most content in their ignorance when you join them in their BOX.

A tightening settles across my chest whenever I find myself trying to cope with the latest events, the latest incidents.  My lungs feel an enormous weight, my heart and breath quicken. The emotional strain is sometimes inconceivable.

CO-LOVED ONES

  It is inevitable and evident when I make most of the decisions that
these are stressful,  emotional, yet thoroughly wonderful days, usually a build up of trivial things anything that threatens, comes crashing down.  Plans go out the window often.

I live/lived in a mixed fiction and reality world, one in the box and the next dreaming of running away.  I try to sort the fiction and reality and try to sort out exactly what transpired when I am not present and a loved one is trying to explain some concerns, a mixture of past and present.

The images remain strong as I marvel at how beautiful my last respite was.  Yes, manage to get out of their box and back into yours periodically, only move your box around or get a bigger one and keep it open or discard it.
"Don't be killed on the inside with memories." with what was and never will be again.

MY LOVED ONE -At 95 (June 2017) Living with us

Don't feel guilty if you don't get out more.
If your loved one places something in odd places or scatters tissue fragments do not scold or correct.  Short term memory allows no allowance for walkers,false teeth, or canes to be left in odd places.

"Dementia alters behavior in all sorts of dramatic and distressing ways, but sometimes its the little pleasures that are gone that hurt the most."  (Excerpt from a book, I recently read.)
When THINGS start to happen there is often the misunderstanding that a moment of forgetfulness is just loosing a few loose screws when in reality it may be the beginning of the early stages of an unpleasant journey.

That journey may just begin with the surrendering ahead of time of the losses ahead.

The comfort we have is that God is in the BOX with us.