“What’s the number for the police?” she
asked her caregiver angrily.
“9-1-1,” John replied.
She dialed the number and told the
operator her car had been stolen and to send someone out to talk to her right
away.
So, who was this woman calling the police
to report a car thief? My mother!
Why was she calling the police? She
thought I had stolen her car!
How did this grand theft auto fiasco
begin? Well, here’s the truth of it . . .
My sister, Paula, had asked my mom
if I could drive her car while I was visiting them in Napa, California for
seven weeks in March and April. After all, I would be running errands for her to
the store, to doctor visits, to the pharmacy, etc.
Mom gave the okay, so when I arrived
on March 8th, Paula and I rode over to pick up the car. Now Mom has
a little dementia; or should I say a great deal of dementia so she was a little
iffy that she had actually agreed to this exchange. Please understand the car
sits in her garage with a dead battery most of the time because it is never
driven.
It wasn’t long before she insisted I bring
her car back every night. She wanted it parked in her garage. We tried to
explain that if it stayed at her house, and I was at Paula’s house, there was
no way I could use it. I had to keep it with me every night. What confusion! We
just couldn’t convince her why this wasn’t possible. This demand went on every
week or so; she insisting we bring the car back and us trying to explain why,
if I was going to take her places, I needed to keep the car.
Although caregivers are with her around
the clock, my mom waits until they are out of sight and then tries to get up by
herself. She is very stubborn and sneaky
so my sister installed cameras in the living room and bedroom to watch her
movements. It doesn’t hurt either, to know what the caregivers are doing. These
cameras can be watched on our computer at any time, saving up to ten day’s
worth of recordings.
I just happened to tune in the night she
was asking John for the phone number to the police. He knew she was upset and
adamant about her “stolen car” and he gave her the number anyway! How’s that
for caregiving a 97-year-old dementia patient? All this time I’m watching the
video and she is getting more and more hostile about her missing car.
Paula was running errands in town so I
called her to go to Mom’s immediately, the police would be arriving soon. She
walked in a few minutes before the officer. The poor man was greeted with a
confused, angry woman. Paula tried to defuse the situation by telling him in a
whisper, “She’s off the rails tonight. Please ignore her.”
He still had to question her for his
report and asked, “Ma’am, did someone steal your car?”
“Yes,” she replied, “and I could just kill
them.”
“Ma’am, do you have a weapon?”
“No, but I can get one,” she answered.
Paula just shook her head and he left
without incident.
That seemed to calm her down for a few
days and then we were back to the same dialogue. “I want my car back in my
garage right now!”
I only had another few weeks left in
California before I returned to Tennessee but Paula and I decided it wasn’t
worth the upset on everyone’s part to keep the car. I returned it to her
garage, walked in, and handed her the key. My parting words were, “Thank you
for letting me use your car. Now you can go out there and sit in it until it
rots.” That doesn’t sound very loving but after days and weeks of her verbal
abuse, I had had it.
What was her reply? “Well, I didn’t mean
that you couldn’t drive it.”
I threw up my hands and walked out the
door. I guess I would not be a very good caregiver with a dementia patient. I
don’t have the temperament or the endurance.
Later, in June, at my
mother-in-law’s 93rd birthday party in Alabama, my comedian
brother-in-law, Ken, announced to the whole Shirley family gathering, “Hide
your keys, we have a car thief in our midst.” Oh, how he enjoyed telling that
one on me. 😊
