Dementia and secrets make for some very strange bedfellows.
To make up for robbing a loved one of the ability to find the right words or remember their loved ones names, dementia begins to unlock closets in the mind where the skeletons are hidden.
It tells your loved one to free the skeletons. No matter how old, small, large, tortured or just plain fucked up those bones are. And dementia doesn't care where you are, when it is or who you are with.
A lovely Mother's Day lunch with Lil Bit and friends? Time to share a lovely anecdote about BD and your departed sister that you never wish you had known and that recolors every memory and everything that you thought you knew.
Driving along a country road? Time to admit that she did back over one of your childhood dogs like you thought she did but could never prove or get her to admit at the time.
Locked in your office working on a new advertising campaign? Time for a phone call to tell you that there was another miscarriage in the journey to have children that you didn't know about.
The skeletons march out. Dancing around in your head. Clearing up misconceptions and lingering doubts.
Your heart breaking with each new denouement for your mother. That she had to carry these lies, white and black, all these years and didn't have anyone to help her with the load.
Things you never thought were in question are repainted and the board redrawn. And don't even try to tell me that your family has no skeletons...every family does. EVERY family.
And while it's been nice to know some things as the dementia has freed portions of Momma's mind, there are other secrets that should stay buried. Things best carried to the beyond.
But that's the thing about life and secrets. No matter how many locks are on the door the bones in the closet always come out to party and secrets never stay in the grave.
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