In my internet browsing I found a lecture by Scott Stuart - Dimensions of Dementia: Deepening our Care. In his lecture Scott talks about the worth of all people, and the value of all people, at all points in their lives. Scott also talked about what we can learn from those who have dementia. They are still teaching us things, and we should be receptive to these life lessons.
My Mother was a teacher, she was a very good teacher. What did Mom teach me, while she had dementia, although indirectly?
That raising children, which I believe is one of the hardest job in the world, is a piece of cake, compared to dealing with dementia!
She has taught me that dementia is not really like a Dementor, a character from the books of Harry Potter. Yes, dementia sucked out the happiness that was in my Mother and most of the happiness that was in our relationship. But the dementia-demon has not sucked out her soul. Her soul and her tortured body were very much still there together, until she died.
What did my Mother teach me? That you will always miss you mother after she is gone, even if she has been gone for sixty years. You can still miss her with all the emotional rawness as it was the day she died. It can be as powerful as it was sixty years ago.
What did my Mother teach me? We are creatures of habit. We like certain things and we don't like certain things. Mom never liked button down shirts or flannel sheets, and somehow she could still communicate that to me. Her aides just attributed that to her daily grouchiness, but I knew the difference.
When Susan lost her mother, she wrote in her blog: "Along the care giving road something amazing happened, my mom gave me a gift of pure Love. My mom knew love and taught me to experience it too. My mom's illness was our greatest blessing, without it, I would not have a heart that is full of love."