“I just put it down here a minute ago! It has to be here!” If you are a caregiver for someone living with dementia, this may become a common question that you may hear several times each day. My advice? Get used to it.
You’ll soon find that your loved one has developed a new habit of hoarding or collecting things. He or she may have found new hiding places so secretive; you’ll wish you had thought of them yourself. Being a book lover and seller, my dad would stockpile any book he could get his hands on. As caregivers we must learn to go with the flow of things. Like in my dad’s case, you may even find that this newly found habit helps keep your loved one calm.
My father found solace in the pile of books he kept stacked in front of him at our kitchen table. Hey, if it comforted him to eat surrounded by books, so be it. Eventually, the pile got so big that I had to install a shelf along the wall next to the table. At times we had just enough room for two dinner plates, and were just barely able to see each other.
He and I had been booksellers for many years, so these were items from which he took comfort and also could relate to, especially pricing them. One day, as I looked over the books on the table, I noticed he had priced our local Yellow Pages! It got to the point where if I found myself missing a book, there was a 95 percent chance it had become part of his priced collection.
I hate to say this, but if you’re caring for a person that is cognitively impaired, a time will come when you may have to lock certain cabinets or drawers in order to protect and preserve important possessions.
Once, I spent several days checking every crack and crevice throughout our house searching for my missing wallet. I hadn’t left the property in days so I knew it had to be here somewhere. When asking my father over and over if he had seen my billfold, I repeatedly received the same reply; “no, did you lose it?” I finally had to asked him to stand up. While “patting him down,” I found it in his left back pocket. His was in his right.
I know you’re thinking I should have used common sense and checked his pockets first, but we have to be sensitive in how we handle things. I simply put my newly rediscovered wallet back in my pocket and told him that his brown one and my black one looked almost identical. Then I patted him on his back and left the matter alone, never to be mentioned again.
Try not to upset them. They are always just a hair away from bouts of depression. They’re storing so much sorrow inside their souls that if they had to stash all that emotion, they’d need a bigger hiding place.