On the advice of “ours-for-life” Rachel, we worked on the kindest lie to tell Mike when he arrived at Carmichael Oaks after his Florida trip. In one of my many phone conversations with Mike, about halfway into his trip, I told him we’d received a notice from the homeowners association demanding that we repair our dry rot-infested fence or face a fine. Every day that I talked with Mike I added a few details. The fence guys found evidence of termites. The termite company found extensive infestation. The house needed to be tented. The next conversation would tell of evidence of toxic mold. I didn’t know how much “stuck,” but he did have some idea that not all was well with our house.
Our plan on Mike’s return was that Matt would pick him up at the San Francisco airport. I would be at Carmichael Oaks waiting to greet them.
Although logic and reasoning was gone, Mike’s intuitive side was more intact. One of his strengths had always been his capacity to connect with another’s emotional distress. We hoped that if he thought I was in great emotional distress over the state of the house, he’d be his old, reassuring self. Here’s the story Matt told when he met Mike at the airport:
He’d flown down to help me. He, Sharon, Doug, Cindi, Dale, Marg, etc., had to practically drag me out of the house. The house wasn’t livable with all of the work they were doing on it. It was actually toxic. The only people who could go inside had to wear those haz-mat suits. But I was refusing to leave. He’d never seen me like that before. They’d had an emergency session with Dr. C and, with his help and the help of heavy-duty medication, they managed to get me settled into a nice residential hotel. They were lucky to find a place with a vacancy. Dr. C encouraged them to bring as much of our familiar furniture and things to the hotel as possible, so it would feel more like home to me. They got everything else into storage so it wouldn’t be damaged by the chemicals and construction. I was doing a little better today. Matt thought I was really relieved that Mike was coming home, but he was worried about me. They had to do everything they could to reassure me. It would be months before the house would be livable again and I simply didn’t seem to understand that.
WHEW!! During all of this someone asked, “What would happen if you just sat Mike down and explained to him what was happening, and that you had to move?”
I’m sure that would have been my question, too, if the tables had been turned. But after two-plus years of trying to explain things to Mike, and make sense of things, and talk through things, and do all of the things that once worked, I knew there was no way to deal truthfully with Mike in that situation.
The necessity of lies was, for me, one of the more difficult aspects of the whole mess. Although I enjoyed writing fiction, I’d always placed a high value on honesty in my real life. Now I found I was becoming more and more at ease lying to Mike. Would lying turn into a convenience that carried over to other aspects of my life? That was frightening to me.
The advice to tell the kindest lie was well taken, but looking back on that time I wonder: What were we thinking in conjuring that convoluted story? I suppose Rachel, or Felecia, the memory care director at Carmichael Oaks, had already told us at one point to keep things simple. The fewer details the better since the more details included the more confusing things become for someone with dementia. By that time, I’d already read numerous books about dementia—memoir, fiction, anything I could get my hands on. I’m pretty sure there was a unanimous opinion about keeping things simple. As much as I understood that in theory, it took a while for me to put the “keep it simple” tactic into practice. Even so, other than the effort it took for Matt to explain all of those details to Mike, there was no harm done. Matt’s take on it was that Mike only listened to the first sentence anyway.
Matt tried to engage Mike in conversation on the drive back. How was Florida? Fine. Who did you see while you were there? Everyone. How’s Uncle Jerry doing? Fine. Mike soon went to sleep and stayed asleep until they pulled up in front of Carmichael Oaks. I’d been watching for them from the “living room” and rushed out to greet Mike as he got out of the car. He gave me a quick hug, then stood under the portico, taking in the entrance to the facility. Looking confused and worried he asked, “Do we live here now?”
“Just for a while,” I said.
Matt got Mike’s bag from the car and the three of us took the elevator to the third floor. Inside the apartment I pointed to his treasured paintings, showed him the bedroom, complete with all of the bedroom furniture from Promontory Point. The closet space, the two bathrooms, the balcony with two chairs, plants, and a fountain. When I asked if he didn’t think we could live here for a little while, he nodded, said he was tired, and went to bed.
We couldn’t believe how easy that had been! All of our fretting, and worrying, and story conjuring! Matt and I were not the only ones who’d been so concerned. Dale and Marg were eager to hear how things went, as were Sharon and Doug, Cindi, Jeannie and Bill, and a host of others. After Matt and I sharing our relief to the point of near-giddiness, he went back to Dale and Marg’s where he was staying. From there he sent a group email, reporting the easy re-entry. The next morning Dale, Marg, Matt, and Sharon met us for breakfast downstairs in the dining room. In terms of Mike’s responses to family and close friends, it still remained the more the merrier, and we wanted to keep Mike as merrier as possible.
Of course, I knew this easy entry might have been the calm before the storm, but I was quite happy with the calm, however long it might last.