When they say you took something

It starts as a gap, not a suspicion

Something is missing and she has no memory of moving it. A mind that cannot supply the true explanation will supply a plausible one, because an unexplained absence is unbearable and a theft at least makes sense.

So the accusation is the end of a chain of reasoning, not the beginning of one. She is not being paranoid about you. She is filling a hole, and theft is the only shape that fits.

It also tends to be about money, jewellery and documents rather than about ordinary objects, because those carry the fear underneath it. Somebody losing control of their own mind is losing control of their security, and gold in an Indian household is security in its most literal form.

Why it is always you

Because you are there. The accusation goes to whoever is in the house, which means it goes to the person doing the most work and the least complaining.

That is worth saying to yourself in as many words on the day it happens, because the hurt is real and it arrives with the unfairness attached. The daughter in law who cooks every meal gets accused. The son who visits twice a year does not. This is not a judgement she has formed about your character. It is proximity.

Do not defend yourself

Every instinct says to prove it. Do not. An argument about whether you are a thief is one you cannot win, and having it confirms to her that this is a serious matter worth escalating.

What ends it is joining the search. Not conceding, not denying, just standing up and looking.

• Instead of "I did not take them", try "Let us find them. Where do you usually keep them?"
• Let her find it herself if you spot it first. Steer her to the drawer rather than producing the thing.
• Do not say "you hid them yourself, remember". True, useless, and it makes her the guilty one instead.
• Say the feeling out loud. "It is frightening when something valuable goes missing." She will usually agree, and agreement ends more of these than any fact does.
• Then move the day on. Tea, a walk, the radio. The wound heals over in minutes once the searching has happened.

Reduce the number of gaps

You cannot argue her out of the pattern and you can give it less to work with.

Learn her hiding places, because there will be three or four and she will reuse them. Keep a duplicate of the things that go missing most, a spare set of keys and a spare pair of spectacles, so a search becomes a two minute event rather than an hour. Put the real jewellery and the real papers somewhere safe with one other family member knowing, and leave something ordinary where she expects to find hers. Avoid tidying her room. A drawer you reorganised is a drawer full of things that have been taken.

When she says it to other people

This is the part that actually hurts, and it is the part nobody prepares you for. It is one thing to be accused in the kitchen. It is another to find that she has told your brother, your neighbour and the woman who comes to clean.

Get ahead of it. Tell the family before it happens, in plain language, that accusations are a normal part of this and that they will be aimed at whoever is nearest. A family that has heard that sentence in advance reacts completely differently to a family hearing the accusation first.

And if a relative believes her, deal with the relative rather than with her. She is not able to correct the record. They are.

Where else to look

These are other people’s pages, not ours. Our own published work and the neurologist who reviews it are on the research page.

• Cultural adaptation of Alzheimer’s disease assessment scale-cognitive subscale for use in India and validation of the Tamil version for South Indian population.
  The cultural adaptation of the same questionnaire for use in India.
• Hindi Version of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination III: Distinguishing Cognitive Impairment Among Older Indians at the Lower Cut-Offs.
  A Hindi memory questionnaire validated for older adults in India.
• Alzheimer’s and Dementia Support, India
  The Alzheimer’s Association’s own pages for families in India.