Dealing With the Death of a Person With Alzheimer's

Coping, and Reaching Out to Friends and Family

If you have just started caring for a loved one that has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, or if you are caring for them now, and know that they are at a more advanced stage with the disease, realize that the entire process is one that has stages of grief. There is no cure for it, the disease or the grief, it is the process that you will have to accept and realize that it will happen to you.

Depression in caring for your loved can become an issue, as you watch them slip away. A noted psychologist, Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross in 1970 wrote about how we grieve, and it's well worth reading it, and applying it to the disease itself, and realizing you'll experience the same feelings again, when your loved one passes away.

The one year anniversary of my father's death is fast approaching. I've often sought comfort in revisiting an old psychology lesson I learned in college a long time ago from Kuebler-Ross, long before I ever realized how important it would be to me later in life. As caregiver or loved one, you can use these steps to help you understand and validate your loss with your loved one too.

• Denial. When you found out the diagnosis, and understood the implications of your loved one having Alzheimer's, you were in shock. It became official with the diagnoses, but your heart might have screamed NO! You might have tried to ignore it, or looked for a second opinion. It seemed surreal and remote to your emotions. 

• Anger. On the death of a loved one, you might recognize the old feelings that you had when told of the diagnoses too. Sometimes, the anger stage comes immediately with, or right after the denial process. At times, it very hard for you to distinguish who you are; a loved one and/or caregiver. When your angry over this intense type of loss, it could happen that you will act out how your feelings on others, or even in self destructive types of behaviors, such as drinking or not eating.