I think that, like most of us, we think of ourselves as basically honest individuals. We are not prone to much dishonesty and help one another whenever possible.
So how did becoming a caregiver turn me into someone who can lie with a straight face?
I think back to my childhood and all of the heavy behavioral lessons that were laid on me as a preacher’s kid. I was taught to tow a straight line and never disrespect another person with dishonesty.
Life can really change a person.
A New Approach
At the start of my caregiving career, I played it straight. Honesty being the best policy (or so I thought), I gave everyone involved my best.
Naive of me, to say the least.
It did not take long for circumstances and plenty of bad actors to ring me up like a pinball machine. Individuals, as well as businesses, are happy to con the uninitiated out of whatever they can.
One of the more memorable events was when a local mortuary physically stole the body of a family member who had passed during the night. When I was informed of the death, I naturally started into organization-mode and inquired as to where I could find the body for final arrangements. I was thinking, logically I believed, that the hospital morgue or some such location would be the folks I would be working with.
The hospital worker sheepishly advised me that a local funeral home chain had stopped by and already claimed the body.
Dumbfounded is probably the best description of my response.
Give it Back
As a fan of the movie, “Young Frankenstein”, I briefly had a mental image of a Marty Feldman type character working the hospitals of Southern California obtaining necessary body parts, but I snapped to the needs of the moment.
The company that had obtained the body contacted me and quite solicitously informed me that they were happy for my business and that they were here to help in this, my “time of need”.
Something clicked in me. I stood up for the rights and desires of my recently departed family member, and this smarmy sales character was not going to get away with emotionally extorting my business.
Long story short, I arranged for the body to be transferred to the appropriate funeral home and funeral arrangements were executed just like the departed had indicated.
I did however receive a faux panicked voicemail from the original sales person letting me know that (GASP!), someone had stolen my family member’s body from their funeral home.
That gave me a chuckle.
Changed
I think many of us come into this harsh new world of caregiving with little preparation for some of the baser elements of human interaction.
I am sure my parents told us kids little lies to help manage our behavior. Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, etc. are wonderful ways of protecting the innocence of children for a short while. Catching Dad in lies about his situation during final years however was very maturing for a son.
We like to think the best of others. That they practice what they have taught you and break those rules only when absolutely necessary.
One of the life-changing elements of dementia is that the disease starts peeling off the filters that prevent dishonesty. In the same way that a 5 year old has difficulty in successfully lying to an adult, that same amateurish innocence shows up in the elderly.
The truth of the situation changed me.
Promotion Time
The role reversal between parent and child was probably one of the toughest transitions for me. Becoming a parent to your parents is playing against a casting you have spent a lifetime playing. Catching them lying to you only compounds the hurt.
The truth is caregivers will regularly lie (either overtly or by omission) to manage the impaired behavior of our loved ones. No malice intended but a necessary (little) evil to help another in a difficult period of their life.
Conversely, the loved ones we care for will regularly lie to us. Again, not maliciously, though sometimes accompanied by anger. They are losing touch with parts of their lives and hope that old emotional tools will still work.
With the inverted power of the relationship, the caregiver strikes a balance as to when to just let the lies go. As in every relationship, not every disagreement is a hill worth dying upon.
Sometimes we just tell them that they are in great shape and things will only get better.
Reassurance counts for a lot.
“I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.”
― Ruta Sepety
Dad's Back 