rude

There's a woman in Mum's household who screams at her.

She's a rather angry-looking crone who seems to have claimed (unilaterally) the one and only male resident (at least 20 years her junior) as her love interest. Apparently she will put her arms around his neck and hang off him until the staff can pull her away. Whenever Mum is about, this woman is hostile, and I suspect that she sees Mum as a rival. It's another form of dementia, of course.

I saw this woman there a few weeks ago on my last visit. The four residents of the household were eating and those of us visiting were having a rather stilted conversation across the table. The crone was sulking powerfully as we engaged her paramour. He was talking about his time overseas.

"I had a cousin who lived in Canada," announced the crone, interrupting Mum as she began to say something.

A few minutes later, in the course of conversation, Mum tried her best to engage this woman by making reference to this cousin.

"What is she saying?" cried the woman, "I don't understand what she's saying!"

Mum blushed quite redly but kept her temper and repeated herself again calmly.

I wanted to remove Mum from this awful situation, this embarrassment and indignity, but it was another case where I realised that Mum is still capable of fighting her own battles sometimes. There's no reason to concede to this woman when the home is just as much Mum's as hers. It's my guilt at being responsible for Mum's move that is behind my desire to remove her at the first sign of difficulty. It's obvious that Mum still thinks this place offers enough to balance one difficult woman.