In the ten years mom has operated her business taking care of senior citizens, I have seen quite a few different forms of dimensia and senility. Today has been the saddest case I have seen. Swift deterioration of memory, like alzheimers, and the confusion that comes with it sets in during sleep. All day you can have reasonably sane conversations with her, but when she wakes up, everything about where she is and why she is there is gone. Tonight she woke up at midnight and was frantic that she was alone (though I was standing there talking to her), that her family had abandoned her (she meant her parents, who have been dead for years), that she was only a little girl and was being punished (the pictures of her parents on her dresser made this worse) and that no one would be there in the morning (I was trying to explain that she's lived here for some time and that other ladies sleep in the next two rooms and would be up having breakfast with her in the morning just like every morning). Twenty five minutes of chatting later she thought she'd try sleeping, but I'm not sure how well that will work. Anything I told her was forgotten within seconds, so if she happens to wake again she won't know who I am and that we had just talked.
As much as I'd like to live forever, if this was what I was facing, I'd rather die quick and painless at a nice young age.
