My dad has Alzheimer's and needs memory care. My mom is still pretty sharp and needs assisted living. My mom decided to move to the memory care unit in a companion suite with my dad. Now it seems that this was not the best decision for her and two sources have mentioned that it might be better if she lived separately and was able to come to visit him. How do you separate a couple that has been inseparable for 67 years? Also how do you afford the cost of memory care and assisted living? The plan was to keep them in the same facility but my dad's condition progressed more quickly than expected so they moved to memory care about a year before planned. They are both in their 90s and live 5 hours from me. I am the only child.
Back up the "sources" [who they?], encourage your mother to step away from hands-on caring and save her energy for visiting, reassure her that taking care of herself and providing the right support for her husband is the best way of preserving their marriage.
As for the money - how are their costs, which must already be pretty high, currently being met?
My mother opted to move in with my brother 21 years ago. She is not happy and has not been for years. Nothing to be done. The girls (3 of us) told her it was a bad idea and to let us help her find something more of a fit. She went with the manipulative brother...and well, that's her bed.
I too, am a fixer, but I cannot fix this.
That idea was quickly quashed as a geriatric care manager was involved. This would have been much more than stepdad could take on and he said so. You need to find a way for mom to live a less stressed and more enjoyable life and dad to get the care he needs.
Stepdad and mom were placed in the same facility, mom in memory care SD in AL. He visited every day and it worked out as best as can be expected.
You'll see lots of threads on this forum bewailing the tendency of friends and family to drift away from both people with dementia and their primary caregivers, and it sounds as if your mother is experiencing a comparable phenomenon. She and your father are now in Memory Care, and there's been some strange loss of belonging to her former peer group. Which leaves her with the choice of moving back "across the tracks" and "abandoning" your father, or staying by his side and separating herself from the community she herself fits with better.
So I can't blame her for feeling pretty wretched about life in general, and being crabby as a result. From her point of view all the available choices suck.
She may also be pissed off and disillusioned at her former community's lack of moral support, and therefore not in the mood to make much effort with them.
And it isn't like there's sunshine and rainbows ahead to look forward to, either.
:(
I think you're right, you can't fix it. What about having a status update conversation with the unit's manager, and seeing if there's anything to be done to relieve your mother's sense of isolation, maybe even ostracism?
Although they've been together a long time, during younger years when working, they would not spend all day together (unless they ran a business together), so if she spent the day hours with her friends, perhaps she would not feel she does not "fit in". This may be her perception only... if the others are still a marital "unit". Focus on the singles might help this.
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