How to Talk About a Friend’s Death When Someone Has Dementia
A friend recently faced the task of letting her mother, who has mid-level dementia, know that the mother’s elderly brother had died. This death was not unexpected, but when a person has dementia and short-term memory loss is a problem, the news would likely be unexpected by the mother.
My friend can be forgiven for dragging her feet. Her mother has been told often that the brother was ill. It was new information to the mother each time. There was no reason for the daughter to think that the telling of her uncle’s death was not going to shock her mother all over again. She seriously thought of not mentioning it. It’s not as if a visit was expected. She asked me what I thought.
I told her what has formed, over a period of time, my personal rule on this very common problem. The person with dementia deserves the dignity of being told, at least once, when a loved one has died. After that, individual circumstances direct how to tell the news and how often to repeat it, if at all.
The degree of closeness obviously has a great deal to do with how often you would repeat this news. If the person who died has lived at a distance, and the person with dementia rarely asks about him or her, then I say tell them once and be vague after that. You can probably get away with that easily and avoid upsetting the elder with the sad news on a regular basis.
However, if a spouse has died, or even a close friend or relative who has been an integral part of life, it’s much harder to know what to say, and how often to say it.
When my dad died, my mother had dementia. She didn’t have Alzheimer’s, but she…
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