My grandpa, mid to late 80s, has had a major decline in his memory the past few months. He lives alone, but we call every day and try to go over there once a week to help him. This mental decline has been causing my dad, my grandpa, and the rest of the family a ton of stress trying to deal with it. Because of this decline, he has started hiding things around his house due to paranoia and doesn’t remember where he puts them. He then calls my dad and accuses him or someone else of taking things. It was even to the point of aggression. Most of these items come from a safe that he had in his house, but he somehow thinks it’s not safe and takes all his valuables out and hides them. This isn’t a big problem, we can find stuff, however he also hides and messes around with his guns. He has been calling multiple times a dad either accusing my dad or asking my dad if he’s taken them. We tried to put things on the guns to track them, but my grandpa forgot what they were and took them off. He’s ended up completely loosing his sense of gun safety and ended up accidentally firing a gun in the house. This was a big scare and the only reasonable thing we thought to do was get rid of the safe and guns. We talked with my grandpa multiple times about moving the safe and he was all on board and sounded like he completely understood that we had to move it. Well, when we actually got around to moving it, he swears he didn’t agree and acts like we just took his entire life away. We hate seeing him like this and don’t know how to explain to him why we had to move it and that he agreed. Moving this safe, which was a part of his daily routine but it was just unsafe to have in his house anymore, has changed my grandpa. He walks around his house defeated, thinking my dad is taking everything away from him when he isn’t. I can tell it’s bothering my dad a ton, and I don’t blame him, I don’t know what I would do in this situation. Today was the first full day my grandpa didn’t have his safe, and it was like he couldn’t even get out of bed because of how defeated he is. We were going to wait at least a week until we decided to bring the safe back or not, but if he’s already like this we don’t know if we should. My dad is just trying to do our best to help my grandpa, and we’re trying our best to help the both of them. Just looking for advice on here, please!!! We desperately need it!!
FYI your Grandpa should be checked for a UTI, which can cause big cognitive changes in a short time.
Your Grandpa, if he doesn't have a UTI, should be taking meds for depression, anxiety and agitation. This will help with the paranoia. He senses something is wrong and is trying to explain why he can't locate his stuff. He can't come to grips that he's the one with the problem, so he accuses others since this is easier for his ego to take.
Do not give the guns or ammo back to him no matter what,
If your Dad is his PoA, then your Dad now needs to read the paperwork to see what activates the PoA authority. If Grandpa doesn't assign a PoA he risks becoming a ward of a court-assigned guardian. It happens all the time...