Your great-niece provides occasional updates—the last one came in March this year—sharing insights and anecdotes about your elder sister’s progressive memory issues. It’s hard to deal with, isn’t it? Especially when faced with situations like her belief that your (late) eldest sister is still alive. In her world, of course, your eldest sister “is” still around, and each morning she wakes up with that certainty. If you asked when she last saw her, she probably wouldn’t quite recall—but she’d be sure it was sometime last week.
Frankly, exasperating as it can be, trying to contradict her makes no difference to her reality. Even if she accepts the truth in the moment, it will be forgotten within minutes. Worse still, correcting her often leads to confusion and distress. The approach that usually worked with your late sister was to play along—gently encouraging her to share happy memories about the person or place she was focused on, and then slowly trying to move the timeline forward, step by step, from there.
Ironically, what helped most with your late sister, almost until the end, was asking her about events she had shared with her younger sister. Their life-changing WWII evacuation together was often a good starting point, opening up several routes to edge the conversation forward. If she could recall a song, a tune, or a radio broadcast from that time, it seemed to ground her a little.
Another surprisingly helpful tactic was applying the rules from the BBC Radio 4 panel game “Just a Minute”, chaired for many years by Nicholas Parsons (and later Sue Perkins). The trick is for you to avoid hesitation, deviation, and especially repetition—even when faced with the same question over and over. In your eldest sister’s case, it was usually, “How’s the family?”, which she used to ask me every three to ten minutes. You may find, as I did, that giving a different answer each time can sometimes steer the conversation briefly in a new direction. Although, as the saying goes, all roads eventually lead to Rome—in her case, Rome came back around rather quickly!
It’s been suggested that a more fitting BBC Radio 4 panel game might be “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”—if only for the title! Among the wonderfully silly things that Humphrey Lyttelton used to encourage the panellists to do, one standout was “One Song to the Tune of Another”. Humming, whistling, or scat-singing a popular song from the person’s era (for example, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”)—and then asking them to join in or guess the title—can sometimes produce astonishing reanimations in someone who otherwise seems quite distant and lost.
Even without such brief respites, approaches like these are a lot more engaging and stimulating than repeating the same old answers to the same old questions over and over. And certainly much better than attempting to contradict the person's version of reality... So, good luck—try to find the fun in your time together, however fleeting it may be. And after all, even if it goes badly, she’ll have forgotten it soon enough (if only we were all so lucky).
Best seasonal greetings to all—including those who are still wondering: “How come the decorations are still up from sometime last week… or whenever?”
