Bad Segeberg

I was in Bad Segeberg over the weekend to visit my grandmother, who lives with dementia. Interacting with her is always so demanding, as she constantly repeats how lonely she is and tells hurting stories about my grandfather’s and my father’s deaths.

That those two are gone for ten and nine years already seems to be her main and most important topic. I always need to try ignoring this and steer the conversation towards more pleasant topics, which again is no easy task, as it sometimes feels like talking to a child, and people with dementia can be very stubborn.

What worked well this weekend was playing some games with her. Games with numbers, as that’s a thing where she still seems to have fewer problems remembering and has more attention. On the other hand, showing her photos of our marriage didn’t work well.

I traveled by train, probably to test my mental resilience against the difficulties with the Deutsche Bahn, but on the way back to the train station, I took this photo. Shortly after, it started to rain again.

Bad Segeberg will remain a special place for me. It’s where I spent a considerable amount of my school vacations when I was a kid. It’s where my father grew up and my parents married. Furthermore, it’s where my grandfather was involved in the construction of (what feels like) half the city’s buildings. And it’s where my grandmother still lives today.

Dementia sucks, and watching someone lose so much of themselves to it is deeply painful and exhausting.