When people talk or write about care giving experiences, you’ll often hear or read something like this: “I’m the parent now.” I’m so intrigued by this theme in care giving stories, particularly in cases of dementia and Alzheimer’s. Do people really see these relationships as the same? What differences do they ignore? We have a hard time seeing our parents as full, complex human beings, and we certainly have a hard time seeing people with dementia as full and complex human beings – perhaps when the two overlap, it’s extra hard to push through to have a new relationship, and fully recognize and be with our parents in the moment.
I interviewed the amazing Karen Stobbe for a chapter that I’m hoping I’ll able to include in the book. She told me a story that spoke to this point. Karen was an actor (writer/director too) when her father was diagnosed with AD. She dove into the world, and has adapted her comedy improv skills to care giving. Stobbe’s mother has now been diagnosed. One day, Karen had the idea to make “pigs in a blanket” with her mom. Karen and her daughter Grace went off to the store to gather the ingredients. It was a generational moment – she and her daughter were recreating a ritual Stobbe and her mother established. When they got home, Karen proudly announced “we’re making Pigs in a Blanket!” Her mother looked blank – “what the heck is that?”
Stobbe said it was an important moment for her. She had to grieve a little for the fact that her mother didn’t recognize a family ritual. “But it made me see that I have access now to something new – I can learn about my mother not as my mother, but as the person she was before I knew her.”
