Is it ok to laugh at dementia?

Different people will answer the question of the title in different ways. My answer: laughing at someone because they have dementia is not ok. But can you laugh at the disease? I do. For me, I have to. What do you think?

I want to share a story from my mother’s dementia with you, because it makes me laugh every time. I hope you laugh too. Maybe you’ll share a fun story of your own in the comments? Again, this isn’t to laugh at my mother at all. But dementia does create moments of levity when we see how the mind works under the condition of Alzheimer’s disease.

My mother grew up on a family-owned dairy farm in western NY. She hasn’t lived there since her teenage years in the mid-1960s. In the early 2000s she moved to Arizona and has lived here ever since. As happens with many people with dementia, she began to long for her original home when the disease took hold. She expressed this desire to me, and I wasn’t particularly surprised. I was, however, surprised when she told me that she couldn’t go back to the farm because her brother let 40 Amish people move into the farmhouse! (Keep in mind that it barely held the 7 people in mom’s family when she was growing up!)

So there I was, trying to figure out what’s going on and imagining 40 Amish squatters refusing to leave the family homestead! I was pretty sure this wasn’t quite accurate. Eventually my uncle called to make a periodic check-up on my mom, so I asked him if he could shed any light on the subject. He told me that my other uncle had rented the land to an Amish family so that they could maintain and use the farm. As the farm had fallen into disrepair over the years, I was thrilled that someone would be loving the land that I loved as a child.

Mystery solved! I still laugh at that one. I get this mental image of an Amish family brandishing pitchforks and grumbling “It’s our land now once! Sehn dich widder. Would you like a handmade quilt before you go?”

To me, that’s wonderfully funny. I know my mom would laugh at that story too, were she able to. I hold on to the humor of that moment when other things are going wrong: when mom is upset, or feels lost in the world, or is convinced that someone stole something from her room.

There are moments when my partner and I are having dinner together and I’m just wiped out from something really challenging that happened with my mom. That’s when she’ll catch my eye with a very serious look on her face and say, “Maybe it was the Amish.” Then we laugh and laugh. It all seems a little more doable again for a little while longer.

I hope this story gave you a smile, and I hope you’ll share one of your own stories in the comments.