Caregiving Daughter

It was definitely one of those comments that I never expected to come out of mouth.  With my mother who suffers from dementia living with us, these moments seem to occur on a regular basis.  I was casually walking down the hallway past our bathroom.  It is our only full bath, so the shower is used by all five of us in our household.  As I passed the bathroom, I saw that Mom was standing there so I continued on.  I took another step, and then I stopped.  Was she doing what I thought she was doing?  I turned back to get a better look, and stood in disbelief.  Yes, she was definitely scrubbing the shower with the toilet brush.  She smiled proudly back at me and she continued to scrub.  “What are you doing?” I asked cautiously.  “Just cleaning the shower,” she innocently replied.  I took a breath so I wouldn’t sound angry.  “Mom, why are you using the toilet brush?”  “Well, I just wanted to clean the shower, and it cleans it real good.”  I paused for a moment, and then the sentence came out of my mouth I never expected to say.  “Mom, please don’t scrub our shower with the toilet brush.”    She frowned slightly and asked, “Why not?”  “Mom,” I gently answered, “that is the brush we clean the toilet with.  When you scrub the shower and tub with it, all those germs from the toilet are getting in our shower.”  She thought about it for a second then said, “Oh, yeah that’s right.”  I felt sorry for her.  I know she was only trying to help.  It feels very strange when you have to correct and teach your own mother something, especially when it is something that she used to know.