Caring magazine Issue 41, April 2016 | Page 6

Help & support and we’d find her packing suitcases for an imaginary holiday at 3am, or getting dressed for a lunch date at 4am. Sometimes Mark and I didn’t sleep much for a week and the stress and tiredness took their toll as they do with many families. One night we had a fight about nothing – we actually punched each other – but looking back I can see that the pressures were simply too much for both of us. This trauma forced us to start coming up with creative ways to make life more manageable. I remember tying string to Mum’s bedroom door and putting it on my finger so I’d know if she left her room in the night! Looking back, it seems silly. But at the time, I genuinely didn’t know what else I could do or where I could go for help. That’s how it feels when we’re under such stress. “The trauma forced us to start coming up with creative ways to make life more manageable.” We also applied our imaginations to making life better for Mum. We quickly realised that if Mum wasn’t going to spend all day sat staring at the TV, we needed to find new ways to keep her busy and give her a sense of purpose. If 6 “Mum and I worked together on a bucket list and did everything on it” only we could find ways to bring her back. We wanted more than anything to see her face light up, and those moments when she looked happy or excited, however brief, became precious. Mum and I worked together on a bucket list and did everything on it – including going to Venice where Mum did horse-riding for the very first time. But the dementia journey is long, and even if you can afford special trips and outings, you can’t spend every day doing them. We soon discovered that visiting garden centres or going to McDonalds for milksh