Shir, just being there and letting her know how much you love her is the best thing you can do.

Typo, may the acid injection do what it's supposed to do with no more problems!

she will do chores if not watched carefully.

My sister is the same way. She'll wash dishes if I don't stop her, and I have a dishwasher!

Shir, in that situation, I've usually found it helpful to let that person take the lead. Whatever she feels like talking about, talk about it with her. And if she doesn't remember things, or remembers them wrong, just go with it -- don't try to tell her that something didn't happen the way she remembers it. And I think the English term would be surrogate grandmother.

Just had my third interview with Big Co in Seattle with the hiring manager. I think it went well? Kind of hard to say. I felt like it was awesome with the woman who would be my peer, but the job that was described today sounds a bit different from the one posted.

I'm still interested, but not sure I am a perfect fit like I thought I was. We'll see, I guess. Hrmph.

I have a teacher story!!

So, I have a small reading group that I work with every day. 3 boys, 1 girl. Two of the boys are African-American, the girl and the other boy are white. Last week, the boys picked the book, so this week, my girl picked the book. She thought she was picking a book about baseball based on the cover, but it ended up being about baseball and the desegregation of a rural school in 1959. So today, we were reviewing the book and at one point, we were talking about the racism in the book. E, my girl, said something about it being dumb and started to say, B is black and we..." when J, the white kid, says, "You can't say that! You can't someone's black!" So, seeing a teachable moment, we broke from the book review and I said, "She can say that. B is black, just like we're white. We can't discount someone's race or ethnicity; it's a large part of who we are and what experiences we have in life. B and O will have different experiences from us because we're white and they're black, just like B and you will have different experiences from E and me because you're boys and we're girls." At which point B says, "Yeah. Tell me about it. There are some weird things going on with my body right now."

I just kind of blinked at him a moment and said, "Yep. We all go through that. So. Where did we see racism in the book?"

High-larious.

LOL

giggle

I adore you Aimee. You are meant to be doing this.

haha.

Thanks, honey. It feels really good to be doing it.

. I just don't have any experience with what would be comforting/helping to an old lady whose mind is playing evil tricks on her. I fear that just visiting wouldn't be much help - she's aware of what's going on, she's an intellectual and a kickass Professor Emerita, and we all know it's heartbreaking and probably not gonna get any better.

Shir, one of the things I have learned about caring for dementia patients is that while they lose many cognitive functions over the course of their illness, they hold on to their senses of humor and their appreciation of music. In many instances, when we cannot get through to a person with anything else, the music of their youth will get through to them. Hil is right about not contradicting whatever they are talking about, no matter how confused they are. It is much more useful to gently lead them away from the topic. An example of that is when K, a lady I used to work with, would say, "I just don't understand why my mom isn't here to take care of me." Instead of telling her that her mother had died years ago, I would tell her that her mom wanted very much to take care of her but just could not be here right now, and that is why I am here, to take care of her for her mom. And then I would ask her about her mother, what they liked to do together, what music they liked, etc. It sounds as though your Grandmother of the Heart is not quite at that stage yet, so I don't know if that will help much.