Thursday, September 15, 2011

Lies and the lying liars who tell them

It has become necessary to lie. It took me some time to get used to the notion as I don't lie typically. The sin of hyperbole I will commit in the best interests of telling a good story, but outright lies I avoid. They simply make me uncomfortable. These days however, the lies are falling fast and thick from my lips. It just makes sense.

The reality of Alzheimer's Disease is that rationality slips away, so trying to be rational is often an exercise in futility. I've spent a goodly amount of time trying to explain things that may only barely make sense to Mummy. Even if the words do make sense, she cannot hold the details, plots and sub-plots that are required to evaluate and assess information. As a result, these days when she asks why something has to be done, I just offer up the first thing that comes to mind. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective), that is no longer automatically the truth. Why bother?

Today, the question was "What time is the appointment?" My answer, "Now". Truth be told, the appointment was three hours away but Mummy can no longer dress quickly. She simply has no sense of the passage of time so the bath can take twenty minutes and the dressing another forty. Right there, we've spent an hour. Then there's alimentation. First we must navigate the waters of, "But didn't I have breakfast/lunch/dinner already?" Then there's the inevitable ten minutes after the meal brushing the teeth yet again (second, third or fourth time for the day). When you roll all that together you see that (i) we must start dressing three hours before the appointment and (ii) I gotta lie else she'll want to start dressing an hour before the appointment and we'll be late for everything....not that even with the long lead times we aren't often late but that's another story I suppose.

So there it is. I am now a liar. I have to be.

**the soundtrack of my lies. This is an old Trinidad calypso by the Lord Nelson about, appropriately, a lying competition.




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