“Oh yeah, every time that dad forgets mom is dead, we head to the cemetery so he can see her gravestone.”
WHAT. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of this awful story. Stop taking people with dementia to the cemetery. Seriously. I cringe every single time someone tells me about their “plan” to remind a loved one that their loved one is dead.
I also hear this a lot: “I keep reminding mom that her sister is dead, and sometimes she recalls it once I’ve said it.” That’s still not a good thing. Why are we trying to force people to remember that their loved ones have passed away?
If your loved one with dementia has lost track of their timeline, and forgotten that a loved one is dead, don’t remind them. What’s the point of reintroducing that kind of pain? Here’s the thing: they will forget again, and they will ask again. You’re never, ever, ever, going to “convince” them of something permanently.
Instead, do this:
“Dad, where do you think mom is?”
When he tells you the answer, repeat that answer to him and assert that it sounds correct. For example, if he says, “I think mom is at work,” say, “Yes, that sounds right, I think she must be at work.” If he says, “I think she passed away,” say, “Yes, she passed away.”
People like the answer that they gave you. Also, it takes you off the hook to “come up with something” that satisfies them. Then, twenty minutes later, when they ask where mom is, repeat what they originally told you.
I support this sentiment. Repeatedly reminding someone with faulty memory that a loved one has died isn’t a kindness, it’s a cruelty. They have to relieve the loss every time, even if they don’t remember the grief 15 minutes later.
In other words, don’t try to impose your timeline on them in order to make yourself feel better. Correcting an afflicted dementia patient will not cure them. They won’t magically return to your ‘real world’. No matter how much you might want them to.
It’s a kindness of old age, forgetting. Life can be very painful. Don’t be the one ripping off the bandage every single time.
americans think ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN of driving 7 hours. they’ll drive 7 hours just for dinner. they’ll drive 7 hours just for chips and dip
Do your butts not get tired
After 12 hours in a car driving across three states, your ass is so numb that it could probably just fall off and you wouldn’t notice.
Tbh I would just get out around hour five and make a home in whatever layby I ended up in
@saxifraga-x-urbium Even weirder is that Americans are either two people: 1. Must never stop driving, not even to pee, just to cut like 15 minutes off of the estimated driving time 2. Get out every hour to see the sights even if you’re driving through absolute buttfuck nowhere
I got car sick just reading that
Same
I am that first type. It’s a problem when the family I’m seeing is a three-hour drive away. At least they know we’ll need to use the bathroom.
authoritarianism mandates a lack of critical thinking in order to function, because the whole point is that you must listen to The Authority, The Authority is always right and The Other is always wrong in order to defend The Community
i’m not here to defend tankie bullshit but to attribute the death of millions through famine to communism is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the regimes under which those deaths occurred
under the ussr intellectuals and scientists were suspect as a consequence of having been born to privilege (in much the same way that intellectuals and scientists in nazi germany were suspect as a consequence of being Jewish [and in much the same way intellectuals and scientists under any authoritarian regime will be made part of The Other because knowledge really is power and The Authority doesn’t want to share])
consequently any goddamn moron is able to establish themselves as an expert by just spouting horseshit that sounds like it agrees with what The Authority is already saying
trofim lyshenko was referred to as “the barefoot scientist” because that was good marketing at the time for a guy who didn’t know jack shit, but happened to have grown up poor and liked to run his mouth about how the concept of genes was fascist
Wheat, rye, potatoes, beets—most everything grown according to Lysenko’s methods died or rotted, says Hungry Ghosts.
Stalin still deserves the bulk of the blame for the famines, which
killed at least 7 million people, but Lysenko’s practices prolonged and
exacerbated the food shortages. (Deaths from the famines peaked around
1932 to 1933, but four years later, after a 163-fold increase in
farmland cultivated using Lysenko’s methods, food production was
actually lower than before.) The Soviet Union’s allies suffered under
Lysenkoism, too. Communist China adopted his methods in the late 1950s
and endured even bigger famines.
Peasants were reduced to eating tree bark and bird droppings and the
occasional family member. At least 30 million died of starvation.
authoritarianism and the anti-intellectualism that necessarily accompanies it has a death count that transcends ideology
whether or not an authoritarian agrees with you on the matter of resource distribution is deeply irrelevant, unless your primary concern is to ‘prove’ that only people who disagree with your ideology are capable of being wrong
in retrospect i can see how posting this right after the thing about clown eggs could be a bit of a rollercoaster
