TRANSITIONAL BALANCE

Imbalance may be related to conflict. Families have had years to develop impediments in their interpersonal relationships and behavioral habits.

A mother can sit calmly as her sons walk in the front door, but become agitated and quarrelsome as the daughter visits. A father can lie unresponsive in his bed when one son visits and exhibit agitation and anxiety when a different child appears.

These are patterns that have developed through the years and will not disappear when dementia moves into the parent’s brain.

The time to resolve conflict is when we mentally can. An entire lifetime does not need to be brought out, he said she said teased apart and isolated for examination. But children were children when the relationship was built usually while the parent was anxiously building a career and discovering who they were themselves. Assumptions both child and parent made were partial truths. Identifying a particular memory and cleansing it in apology deactivates the deadly power the memory has to divide and continue to cause pain.

War is a deadly method of resolution. Balance can be restored by lifting one foot to see what impediment causes the hazard. Then holding on to the arm of the offender/offended, scrape it off and together throw it away.