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Your profile says she is "94 years old, living in assisted living with age-related decline, alzheimer's / dementia"

If it were me I'd say no. If she has memory issues you will be re-telling her and she will be re-mourning the loss. If she asks about her friend I would opt for a "therapeutic fib" and tell her something less distressing ("I don't know what she's up to lately") . She won't be able to process bad news and work through her grief very well, as is what happens with dementia.

Just last night my MIL called us from LTC (which is pretty rare) with the delusion that my brother-in-law was "missing" (he lives in AZ and we are in MN) and she was very stressed out about it. We opted to tell her that Jeff was at our house (no he wasn't) and perfectly safe, but was out walking the dog at the moment so couldn't come to the phone. All was well after that.
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When dementia is present in a 94 year old woman, telling her that her best friend died serves no good purpose. It will only upset her and she'll forget the information, making it necessary for you to keep repeating it again and again, causing her to relive the trauma again and again as a result.

The goal with AD and dementia is to keep the loved one calm and non-agitated. When one of the family members died, or a friend, I did not tell my 95 y/o mother who lived in Memory Care for these reasons. She was anxiety ridden enough w/o hearing bad news!!!

So sorry to hear this news, and so sorry that your mom is suffering with dementia; the long goodbye is the worst way to lose a loved one, I know. Best of luck.
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You know your Mom much better than we do. I am going to guess that your guess about this is as good as, or much better than any guess we can make. Basically I believe in honesty. But I don't know your Mom, so will leave it to you to decide if honesty isn't the best move here.
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If she is able to understand, yes. Otherwise, no.
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A best friend. That's super sad. It's not like saying, hey, y'a remember Betty White? Well, she died. That wasn't too cheerful for almost everybody.
Even closer and long lived, a best friend, boy oh boy, telling an old lady her best friend died, doesn't seem right.

On the other hand my husband's sweet old grandma use to love to speak about who died and pass around the news. She minded but having bad news was a sport for her.

Imo - I know it's tough to fib to mom, but I vote for being merciful.
And so here are my rules for me:
1) When I can spare someone dear heartache, and pain, I spare them.
2) If the one receiving bad news doesn't benefit from hearing it, then no.
3) If I don't benefit from reporting hurtful news, then no. (That's a joke).
And-
4) Being honest is very often cruel, and it takes a real big hearted, generous and thinking person to make that call.
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Oh, wow. That is so sad. If you don't want to tell her and think it would upset her, I think you'd be completely justified in not telling. We had a situation like this in our family. My brother and stepmother were both very sick and passed away late last year. My brother lives quite some distance from us and my stepmother in AL didn't know he was sick (he declined very quickly). She decided she wanted to talk to the three of us in a conference call (myself and my two brothers). When she tried to arrange the call she found out about my brother, and it was so upsetting to her that she went downhill fast and died a short time later. So I would not blame you at all if you didn't want to say anything.
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No, not if she has dementia. She'll get upset if she remembers that friend, but she'll forget you told her, then you'll tell her again and she'll experience the loss again. It's cruel.

I spent the last two years of my mom's life trying to convince her that her best friend HADN'T died. She was always sad about her friend's death, then perked up when I told her she was alive and kicking (which she was).
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