Offering Dignity
How to honor those we care for even as they decline
My husband is visiting his 91-year-old mother today. He will refill her medicine organizer and then ask her where she would like to go for lunch.
The conversation will go something like this:
Him: “You want Mexican or pizza today?
Her: “Oh, it doesn’t matter. You choose.”
Every two weeks, they have this same conversation. I don’t know if she declines a choice because she is a southern woman and raised to be polite, or because it is harder for her to make choices these days — even simple choices like where to eat for lunch.
But even though he knows she will not have a preference, he still asks. Because one thing he has been really good at while caring for his aging mother is respecting her dignity.
I wish I could say the same for me. I often lost patience with my dad and just told him what we were doing on any given day. I told him where we would eat. When we would go to the doctor. Whether or not he would move to memory care.
In my defense, Dad had dementia for ten years and at some point lost the ability to make a clear choice. Sometimes he still had opinions, strong opinions even, but they were often choices I felt were impossible or unsafe. For instance, he did not want to go to the hospital when he was severely dehydrated and could not get out of bed. If he had stayed at home one more day because “I am fine,” he would have been dead.
That is when I adopted the phrase I would frequently use thereafter:
“People who don’t know who the current president of the United States is do not get to make their own choices.”
But I could have been nicer to Dad. More respectful. I could have tried harder to maintain his dignity.
I believe in dignity. I am Episcopalian for goodness’ sake. One of the vows we make in our baptismal covenant is to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.” And our priest reminds us of this vow often.
But respecting dignity is hard when you are exhausted and sad and still have to care for an injured, confused, and beligerant eight-five year old year old dad.
Two years after my dad’s death and twelve years after his dementia diagnosis, I still don’t have this one figured out.
How do we balance respecting our elders’ dignity with giving them the best care? How do we balance their need for respect with our exhaustion and need for more rest?
There are no easy answers to this question. It is probably best done on a case-by-case basis, involving how serious the issue is and how much energy we have that day.
I could have given Dad more say on the smaller choices and on normal days. I probably could have been gentler and more patient in explaining why he couldn’t choose on the serious matters as well.
But I am human. And so was he. I would get cranky, or he would get cranky, or we both would be cranky, and that was how the cookie crumbled that day.
But if I could go back, I would think more about his dignity. Even if that meant I needed to accept more help sooner, so I wasn’t so tired and sad all the time.
So prayers for my husband and mother-in-law as they choose between Mexican and pizza today. And prayers for you who are in the trenches, caregiving for your loved ones.
May you find some peace as you find the balance between offering dignity and taking a hard stand when you need to.
For others in this boat, how have you maintained your loved one’s dignity even as they continued to decline in mind and body?