A Funeral, Dementia, and the Mercy of Forgetting

A resident needed to be prepared to attend a funeral. The aides had dressed her. I was at the facility as a CNA instructor, so I had time to stay with her and do her hair.

She had very advanced dementia. I stood behind her, curling her hair, wondering why anyone thought taking this ill, extremely confused, easily agitated woman to a funeral was a good idea. She hadn’t left the facility in over a year.

While I was helping her, a staff member came into the room and said, “Bessie, I’m so sorry your son died.”

Bessie looked up at the person, startled.“My son died?” she asked. “Which one?”

“Glenn,” the staff member said.

“Oh no,” Bessie said. And she cried.

It was immediate. Loud. Heartbreaking.

It lasted less than a minute.

Then it passed.

Her face settled. Her body softened. I picked the curling iron back up and kept going.

A few minutes later, another staff member walked in.“Bessie, I’m so sorry your son died.”

The same pause. The same question. The same recognition. The same grief—just as devastating and intense as before.

She suffered the exact pain of hearing that her child had died, as if it were the first time.

Less than a minute.

Then it passed.

A third person came into the room and began, “Bessie, I’m so—”

“Stop,” I said.

I didn’t explain. I just stopped it.

If there is any mercy in dementia, any small one, I believe it is this: she didn’t have to carry that knowledge. Not at all. And certainly not over and over.

There’s a saying

One sibling will attend all the funerals.

One will attend none.

And one will have no siblings left to attend to theirs.

It made me realize that if I died today, two of my siblings would attend my funeral.

The other three wouldn’t understand, or remember, that I was gone.

To protect resident privacy, identifying details in this story have been changed. The situations described reflect real issues encountered in long-term care.