The Two Deaths of Dementia

Posted on August 5, 2019 by Bagozzi Twins Funeral Home under blog, funeral home
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Before funerals at funeral homes in Solvay, NY, a significant number of our loved ones who die will suffer from some type of dementia. Dementia is a term that covers all neurological degeneration that affects cognition and memory.

Although Alzheimer’s disease is the best known type of dementia, it is just one of the many types of dementia that have been diagnosed by neurological research. Others like frontotemporal lobe dementia, vascular dementia, and Lewy Body dementia, to name a few, are becoming more common. It is not uncommon anymore for people to be suffering from several types of dementia (this is called mixed dementia).

funeral homes in Solvay, NY

In addition, there have been more cases of dementia related to traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) discovered in military personnel and in professional athletes like football players, hockey players, boxers, and soccer players due to repeated head injuries that damage the brain.

Dementia is all around us. It starts as mild cognitive impairment, where short-term memory loss is sporadic, but losing things, losing the ability to remember how to get to familiar places, increasing instances of confusion, and increasing difficulty with communication and complex problem solving become more pronounced.

As dementia progresses, there will likely be symptoms of paranoia, delusional thinking, and visual and audio hallucinations. These are common, and although there are some medications that can help, many of them have side effects that are worse than the good they can do.

At some point in the dementia journey, while our loved ones are still alive, the first death occurs. This is when the neurological damage progresses to the point where our loved ones don’t know us anymore. While some people with middle-to-late-stage dementia lose the ability to communicate, most of them don’t.

You’ll feel the sting of that first death the first time your loved one asks you who you are and what your name is. It will come out of the blue, from nowhere, while you’re doing something ordinary with them, like having dinner or just sitting and talking.

It’s a shock to the system as you process that loss – although sometimes they may still remember you, but you never know when or if that will happen again – juxtaposed with the fact that your loved one is still very much alive.

It’s tough at first, but eventually you get through it and accept that death, even though it can be painful at times because you still have all the memories of your loved one and you and they simply don’t remember, unless it’s way back in their lives.

You and your loved one will live in this state, which will get progressively worse, until the second death occurs. That death is the loss of their physical lives.

People who have loved ones deal differently with this second death. Some have already done their grieving with the first death, so they’ve already, in their hearts, said goodbye to their loved one. They handle the second death pretty stoically. Other people feel relief (and guilt at that feeling, which they shouldn’t, because caregiving for a loved one with dementia is hard work). And still other people begin a whole new grieving process that they attach to the grieving process of the first death.

We understand the two deaths of dementia at funeral homes in Solvay, NY, and our compassionate and experienced team at Bagozzi Twins Funeral Home, Inc. is here to help you with the second one. You can visit our funeral home at 2601 Milton Ave., Solvay, NY 13209, or you can call us today at (315) 468-2431.

Bagozzi Twins Funeral Home

Serving families in Solvay, NY, the Greater Syracuse area, and all of Central New York for over 90 years, we are honored to have earned many awards for service excellence and customer satisfaction.

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