Ego wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2024 10:22 am
Maybe charisma is not the most useful characteristic for this? We have someone in our immediate vicinity who is more than 90, extremely frail and has constant health issues. Yet somehow he has a parade good-hearted helpers who bring him food, clothing and supplies. They also help him with expenses not covered by his Social Security. Basically everything he needs is provided. As soon as they leave, he disposes of much of the stuff they bring, making it appear that he is reliant on them alone. The next person arrives to find the cupboard is bare, so they restock it with Whole Foods and Trader Joe's foods. The givers get whatever they need from interaction. He maintains a series of overlapping people willing to help in various ways. Symbiotic manipulation?
That is an absolute gem for anyone trying to lean on social capital in the life end-game.
I keep having a hard time disentangling what is my brain's attempt to dump horrible memories and what might be useful to people. But experience, unfortunately, I do have.
Finding ways to be easy to help is important. My grandma didn't As dementia kept trucking along, she kept getting more clutching and controlling. Now, by the point she was in assisted living, her husband and both of her children were dead (all within a year and a half), so the amount of grief we are talking is (I hope) unimaginable. But actually, she was really hard to deal with starting with the time grandpa was dying.
I feel so bad for her, and always did once the bad times started.... I only came to the realization of her torturing of my grandpa some time later in conversations with my mother about what happened at the time.
Grandma was a sweet 1950s housewife. Small staple of recopies, but well worked out. A prolific artist who was involved in the community art scene (found that out that community part from newspaper clippings when it was I who was left to go through everything). A detail I always use to try to explain about her was that no matter what step she was at working on her art, she would drop it when you came (no need announce you're coming over) and give your her attention and love. The hundreds of games spread out between of Dominoes, Scrabble, Yahtzee, and Gin with her weirdest, oldest grandchild. It only human-made place I've felt like I truly belonged... I haven't gotten it right at either of my adult homes yet. It's just so sad to have grandma be also such a key to my life, to have her be so great in her own way, only to have it all be so fucked up the last 6% of her life.
I don't know what switches can be flipped to make sure you handle dementia like my grandpa, trying what you can and then just laughing it off -- a second childhood versus being like my grandma, low capacity, but trying to find fault with anyone who by all rights should be making the decisions -- a second middle school.
Here's hoping for the former instead of the latter for all of us. But here's to hoping more can be done on healthspan instead of just keeping our husks around.