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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, he wants his wife.  I’m a widow, I get it.  Check yourself.[/quote]

+1.  He spent decades with his wife, and now he has dementia and misses her.  Sounds pretty normal to me.  Weird flex on your part, op.  [/quote]

My FIL with dementia is like this too. He doesn’t remember how horrible he was to her. [/quote]

They don't realize they were horrible. That's why they don't remember. Also if they realize that they were horrible, it would cause a lot of grief, so their brains sort of protect them from that realization, especially as they get older.

My sister forced my mom to confront some of her awful parenting in her 70s and honestly I wish she hadn't. My mom couldn't handle it and it just made it that much harder. At some point you have to accept a person did what they did and let it go because they are too old to be held accountable. Your FIL cannot make up for the way he treated his wife now. I'm okay with people deciding not to care for elderly people who were abusive to them or their loved ones, but I don't see the point in trying to punish them at this age. Either care for them and let it go, or let someone else care for them and move on with your life. You are not going to extract a satisfying penance from an elderly person with dementia. You just aren't.[/quote]

Uh, no one is punishing him for anything. It's just surprising to hear what he said.
He also claims she died at the end of the staircase in their old home. 
No, she died in a bedroom just a few feet away from his.
He also talks about how when his father died, he was a young boy.
I had to remind him that he already was married and had two kids who were beyond toddler age when his father died.[/quote]

Yeah I mean, I would translate those things to:
“I’m afraid of dying and how it’s going to happen” and maybe “I feel like if I was a young boy who had lost his father.”

There’s not really any upside to correcting facts at this point. Well I mean, you can if it makes you feel better. But it’s probably not therapeutic. And therapeutic helps you even if you hate him, if you’re managing his care.

You could respond by redirecting if you don’t want to talk about death. Or you could say “I’m glad we have the stairlift now to help you get up and down safely” or “what did you miss about your dad” or something like that.

[/quote]

Hm, I don't think he is afraid of dying. He's spoken about it a few times. He has short term memory loss.
It's strange though. I listen to him tell his stories, like I listen to my mother tell her stories. You learn a lot about people if you just let them ramble on. He will go on and on about his youth in detail. But he can't remember what he had for breakfast.
After hearing about his record of his father's several times, I realized, wait, you were actually much older and reminded him of this. He never spoke about it again. I wasn't sure it was a good thing to agree with a factual mis-memory.

His children go through the motions of caring for him. But in a robotic way. They are less inclined to listen to his stories and will sometimes shut him down. I put up with it out of courtesy.[/quote]

I think they have a lot of resentment about their childhood.
Anyways, FIL has always loved talking about himself, not much interest in others. 
Years ago, when he was going on and on about his childhood maid, I asked if she had a family. He did not know.[/quote]

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