What is it that makes repetition so hard to bear? Why should hearing the same excerpts from the same article in the same magazine every evening of the week get under my skin?
Why should the same review of the same information repeated the same way every other minute bug me?
It is true that I try to minimize opportunities for repetition. I switch out magazines. I put things away. I simplify the situation ahead of time.
It is also true that I employ coping mechanisms. When Mom starts commenting on her magazine article, I switch over from my reading to cross stitch. If I’m feeling too frazzled, I head back to my room and my computer for awhile.
Yet there is no way to speed some processes along. When she wants to take the trash out to the garbage can, the vegetable and fruit leavings out to the compost bin, the empty cardboard box out to the shop, and John’s clean laundry over to his house, things get complicated. She refuses to leave multi-tasking behind even though it is beyond her. So, we review the little stacks she has painstakingly assembled by the front door . . . and review them . . . and review them. Sometimes she successfully makes her deliveries, sometimes she doesn’t. But that is what I am here for: to pick up the pieces that get left behind.
I remind myself that the important thing is for Mom to feel useful and happy. I think about how she sacrificed her life for us four children, raising us completely alone. I remember to exercise patience and gentleness whether I feel like it or not, hoping that if someday my mind gives out before my body does, someone will provide loving care for me, too.
Mom does not know that she and her memory loss are the subjects for much of my writing. It would deeply offend her, and for that I am sorry. But the writing is how I survive, and I hope that this particular survival technique will someday bring solace to another caregiver who is answering the same question for the umpteenth time.
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