Learning How to Find Grace in Dementia

A report from the trenches.

The doctor is young. Considerably younger than me. Maybe mid-thirties to my mid-forties.

He’s kind to my parents-in-law in the same way that a pediatrician would be kind to a frightened three-year-old. He speaks slowly and brightly and in short sentences. Tells them that today is only about answering questions. His and theirs and ours — my husband’s and mine.

We’re all huddled together in a standard-issue exam room. A nurse had to bring in extra chairs, because Carole and George can’t do this alone, or without each other. My husband, their only son, can’t do it without me.

My mother-in-law only has one question. Her mind works in loops lately — four or five stories she repeats and repeats and repeats. In the doctor’s office, she asks her one question over and over and over. Every two or three minutes until we leave.

And then she repeats the answer the whole drive home, like she’s trying to cement it in her faltering brain.

“Are you going to make me put him away?” She asks. “I’ve had him around a long time. I don’t want to put him away.”

“Of course not,” the doctor says.

“Of course not,” my husband says.