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96-year-old woman comes out of the closet.....

TR6BILL

Luke Skywalker
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My office manager's 96-year-old mother lives with her family. The old gal is sweet but sadly feeble. Recently, she exited her bedroom through the wrong door and ended up in her dark closet. Confused, she stayed there for several hours. Finally, they heard a faint, "<span style="font-size: 8pt">It's dark in here...</span>." They opened the closet door and she came out, confused.
 
TR6BILL said:
My office manager's 96-year-old mother lives with her family. The old gal is sweet but sadly feeble. Recently, she exited her bedroom through the wrong door and ended up in her dark closet. Confused, she stayed there for several hours. Finally, they heard a faint, "<span style="font-size: 8pt">It's dark in here...</span>." They opened the closet door and she came out, confused.

Clever story. But I'm not a fan of joking about an elderly person's dementia. Will be interesting to hear Basil's take on this.

Tom
 
Geeez, Tom. Lighten up. First, it is not a <span style="font-style: italic">story</span> but true and the old gal does not have dementia. She is just very old and somewhat feeble. And depends on her daughter. They all laughed about it, including her. She knew someone would find her sooner or later.
 
Tom, I've got one parent with Alzheimers and one with dementia: if I didn't joke about it from time to time, I'd go nuts.

You're right, it's no joking matter but I don't think the above joke had any malice intended.

Dementia/Alzheimers can be funny, in a very tragic way.

Cheers to all, let's not make a huge deal of it.
 
My mother had Alzheimers.

If it were not for the humour that we could extract from day-to-day incidents or comments she made, life would have been VERY depressing for us all.

I see no harm in the above post....and declare no foul.

YOMV
 
Our mother required full time care, brother was her care-giver. She often would shake her head and refer to herself as our "INvalid" mother, in attempt to offer a brief bit of humor.
And she'd quote Jimmy Buffett's: "If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane!" line too.

Stuff happens, we cope. Some differently than others. <shrug>

Personally, I chuckled over Bill's story. It reminded me of me mum.
 
My mothers father, my grandfather and best buddy, had Alzheimer's. I still remember the day I rode my bicycle 12 miles to spend the day with him. He was standing in the driveway as I proudly rode in, he looked at me and asked who I was and what I wanted.
Sure it was hard on me, but he had to cope in a different way. There were days when he was angry which was not at all like the good man he once was. Humor helped him not be so self conscious. But is is still good to remember that saying mean spirited things is not OK. I don't find Bill's story offensive. There is a reason my new insulin pen has an electronic memory built in. That is what worries me.
 
Kelly's aunt has it. WE all have a laugh about it from time to time. Every Christmas she's tries to send cash to folks that have been dead for years. The good thing about folks with alzheimers is you never run out of things to talk about. It may be the same story 12 times in a row, but they never run out of things to say. I find it makes visits easier to handle.

Weird thing is, she NEVER talks abouyt her husband ( been dead since '93). I think she's living in a time before him, but they met pretty young.
 
I think the toughest part is during the middle of the decline when they know there's something wrong and information in the brain is gone, but no longer understand what's happening. Saw this years ago with a friends father who went through it starting around age 50. Changed his personality completely as he couldn't understand to be able to cope.
 
When dealing with sensitive issues it's usually best not to jest, at least not publicly! IMO That way NO one is offended.
 
I don't find Bill's humor offensive either. I coped with a dad-in-law who suffered from dementia and often we all had to find humor with his behavior if only to remain calm and copable. We all loved him and were not making fun of him. We all know that he would have found some of his conduct humorous. The one thing he said every day was "Is the big cheese up yet?" The big cheese was me. That was his reaction to my bossing him to do things he didn't want to do - like get dressed, stay awake in the car, use his napkin(s) in the restaurant, etc. All done to continue to allow him his dignity. We all loved him and to take his conduct lightly and with good humor was all we had to lean on.

I suspect your reaction was out of love but as said we all deal with this type of adversity differently.

:grouphug:
 
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