You have dementia: does that mean I have to love you?

You have to give her a hug I tell myself as I am rushing out the door.

I read somewhere that a 30-second hug is all that is needed to secrete enough oxytocin to reduce stress, cure depression and generally enhance happiness. I definitely want my demented mother to feel happier.

We’ve never been much of a touchy feely family, preferring to reserve affection for special occasions such as really long departures — moving to a foreign country for the next 50 years is a good example.

In between times we have taken affection somewhat for granted: ‘‘of course I love you, I’m your mother aren’t I’’.

But I am trying to get into the habit of daily overt affection rather than soothing my bad conscience with an occasional stray thought along the lines of ‘‘I’ve just made you scrambled eggs for breakfast, haven’t I, so I must be doing a good enough job of caring for you’’.

It’s bloody hard: the caring and the affection.

You try a 30-second hug when you have a train to catch. I think about the relativity of time as I slowly count to 30 while clutching on to poor old Oma who is trying to squirm away to eat her eggs. I can see the train pulling away from the station and me being late for work again.

Some people are natural carers but I am not. Needy people annoy me. Oma annoys me every day because people with dementia are extremely needy and annoying. Caring for her is made even more difficult by the fact that she and I have never really hit it off. She was a stressed out control freak and I’ve always hated being told what to do. And I still resent the fact that she was an absent mother — absent in the sense that a large portion of her mind continued to live in her Croatian village while the remainder took care of the normal routines of cooking, cleaning, yelling at you and giving you a whack with the wooden spoon. She should have accepted the reality of immigration rather than keeping her old life so alive in her head. It’s as if she bulldozed a deep channel in her brain with her thoughts of home because going home is now her default position.

However, I am trying to shove my heart in the right place, as that old saying goes, but it is not there yet. I know the theories behind caring for someone with dementia — I’ve even heard about unconditional love — but I am not yet in a place where I can practise them. I lack acceptance. And patience. And niceness.

But I figure a 30-second clinch should be good for both of us.

For me it could be a form of meditation... a blank mind saying ‘ohm’ while counting out 30 seconds. With this dose of peace I might not be running to the train station swearing about the fact that Oma has again put her clothes on over her pyjamas. Or that I had to spend 20 minutes looking for her knickers and singlets because she moves things around every day and you never know what you will find where. (The fridge is full of empty plastic bags.)

For her I hope that an increase in oxytocin —whatever that is — will give her some peace.

I think if more peace comes into her life she will be more accepting of the fact that the front gate has a big lock and chain that she can’t cut through with scissors. Perhaps she will feel more at home and less anxious to leave.

I know that she is lost in her head. She firmly believes her village is within walking distance and that her parents and grandparents still live there. ‘‘I have to go home,’’ she keeps telling me, ‘‘my people will be worried about me.’’

Rather than telling her the facts — your parents and grandparents are long dead and I’m your daughter — I now try to get into her reality.

How frightening it must be to be locked up in a strange person’s house when you are convinced your real home is just around the corner.

At various times I have heard her say that she is living with her auntie, or with her sister or with some woman and her dog.

The other morning she came into the garden where I was chopping back a vicious bougainvillea — her handbag and her knitting under her arm — and said she was very upset.

‘‘My girlfriends were here,’’ she said, ‘‘and they left without me.’’ ‘‘I tried to follow them but they have locked the gate. How could they do this to me. I thought they were my friends.’’

I figure you can’t do anything but try to dole out some more affection.