I recently had to look my 83 year old mother in the eye and tell her that the hearing aid she has complained about being dead for 2 months is working perfectly; the hearing issue is with her, and is related to her advancing (vascular) dementia. That was not a good day for me, but my brothers and I promised Mom we would be honest and straight forward with her aging issues.
I personally think many of us don’t realize our parents have been slipping long before we notice it. As long as we see them functioning as usual, we assume all is well mentally and physically.
My mother continues to perform her routine functions very well in her home environment, but she is anxious and uncomfortable on any outing, and clearly shows she has no business being out alone. Mom no longer navigates well in any store; she is easily confused by all the merchandise to choose from, and it’s no longer as simple as finding the baking aisle and looking for the yellow bag of sugar. From an early age, I was impressed that my mom always wrote her grocery list by each aisle of the store. Eventually I figured out that was actually very easy to do, but 5 years ago I saw that mom has now lost that ability, along with a lot of others. Yet, her house is clean, her laundry is done, she cooks for herself, gets her paper and mail from the box, walks her trash over to my brothers 3x a week, but my brothers and I write her checks and do all the driving.
I asked my Mom to stop driving 5 years ago, after following her home from town. Until then we had no reason to suspect there were any issues with her driving; no tickets, no accidents, no damage to her SUV. What I witnessed was a clueless robot driving her SUV; she was in her lane, driving the right speed, but she was simply performing a routine function. Mom had no clue I was behind her, because she had tunnel vision for just what she saw thru the left side of the windshield. She had not seen the barrels and tape around a 5 ft hole in the ground for utility repairs, or notice the neighbor who pulled out in front of her, blew the horn and waved. I could tell from the questions I asked that my mom did not remember driving home from town! Mom didn’t give us any hassle about not driving, because she realized she was simply performing a routine function, without being focused on what she was doing.
I think 2018 is going to be a tough year for us with taking care of mom, even tho we have a Plan A and Plan B that we’ve talked about for several years. Making these decisions are not always easy, but we must do what has to be done, to keep our parents safe, and I join all others who do not think the OPs mother should be driving.
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