In the past year, it has become nearly impossible to have a normal conversation due to mom's memory loss.
When I visited yesterday, I brought a photo album from when I was an infant and young child. She didn't know who I was or many of the other people, but once I told her, she started to "remember". She always knew who the cats were even though they've been gone many years.
I have no hope of having a normal conversation again but I imagine bringing old pictures or albums will work better than anything else at this point and she seemed happy to look at them.
What do you do?
I think it is the children who have to cope with the loss of a parent who remembers their childhood - parents are people in their own right, not our nurturers forever. I once was determined to stand up to my mother, to "finally" hold my ground, about something unkind she had done to my sister. I won the argument and felt so good - but when my mother died a month later, that "real" communication I had craved for much of my life - suddenly seemed out of place - I had not realized that she was so ill.
I carry that memory with me to remind me - and it has been helpful in the years that I've done elder-care - it's not about my needs any more, except as I can fulfill them by my actions of making time to visit, joyfully fit in some gladness for small bits of humor or insight that comes up just by chance, if I make time to spend with them, quietly. They can nurture me, but in very brief moments.
Elders have needs, not for just health care, though those are important and they do need people to watch and anticipate. But they also value connections now, they do pick up on our wish to visit them, to care to see them, spend time with them - and as long as there is flexibility and clarity and repetition with a topic, they can enjoy it briefly.
That lasts no more than a couple of hours, when they are glad to see us go, for they are tired. Then they are glad to see us again.
With photos - it REALLY helps to have names written nearby - in big letters! I too don't remember peripheral people in photos, even if they were very important to me and my family growing up. Being with elders is a gift, if we can seek and enjoy the process of slowing down, not worrying about what they remember - then we find they tell us memories we often knew nothing about!
I'm her scrapbook daughter and she loves looking at the pictures.
Other than the scrapbooks, I talk about my memories. I never say, "Remember when ...?" I say "I remember ..." The other day I read the menu board and told her that there would be "mini corn dogs" for lunch. Then I went on, "I used to love it when you made corn dogs, which we called pronto pups." She looked puzzled and I knew she didn't remember it. I went into detail about how and why she started that, Dad's role, what us kids thought of getting home-made corn dogs, etc. etc. I don't think she ever remembered it but she seemed very pleased with the story and to know that her kids liked her cooking. There is often something that provokes a memory in me that I share with her.
What I try to communicate is "You are loved. You were loved all your life. You are a good person." I don't use those words, but that is almost always the message.
We now color together. She was doing a picture of lilacs and that me talk about "the farm" where she grew up, always a good topic for her.
Your presence communicates that someone - and she may or may not know who you are - cares about her. My MIL introduces me as a lot of different people in her life - the important thing is that she gets excited and happy that "someone she knows" is visiting her. That is a lot to communicate to someone with dementia.