As soon as I finished my speech a woman said she was going to hug my neck and then tell me why she did it. She said, "My mother and my husband are here in this nursing home. Both have Alzheimer's. You are the first person to tell me it is all right for me to be angry about that." She asked me to accompany her down the hall to where the Alzheimer's wing met the rest of the facility and said, "That is my spot right there. I have stood there many a night and cussed them both. Then I go home and feel awful. I must be the only person in the world that would feel that way about a mother and a husband with such a terrible disease." But she isn't the only one.

Not knowing what we are suppose to feel may be the major source of the guilt we feel while caring for elderly loved ones. No one tells us what normal is. No one explains that feeling burdened or angry or frustrated or tired does not mean we stopped loving. It just means we are human beings and human beings get tired and angry and burdened no matter how much they love the person in their care.

The problem is, no one tells us about feeling those kinds of things so we assume we are the only ones who do so. Everyone else seems to be handling it so well and smiling through the care. We have no idea what they are really feeling inside, so we assume the best for them and the worst for us.

And we seem to need to hide these feelings to prove our character and our love. A woman asked me to appear on her TV show. From the moment she picked me up at the hotel all the way to the TV station, then all through the show, and the dinner that followed she talked constantly about how wonderful taking care of her mother had been. I came away thinking her mother was the most saintly person who ever lived and my hostess was probably an angel in disguise. I spoke the next day about the need for us to know what is normal when we are giving care. After the meeting this lady grabbed me, pulled me aside and said, "I lied to you all night. I cannot tell you how often I wondered when I stopped loving my mother."

Another lady said "I am the worst wife in the world. I am yelling at my husband. He is in early Alzheimer's and the in and out of reality drives me crazy. The kids came over today and he knew each one and could even tell us their birthdays, then I gave him some milk to put in the refrigerator and he put it in the stove. You just know he does some of that just to bug me." She thinks she is unique, she actually is just normal.

We love them, but we still get tired. We love them but we still get angry. We love them but we still feel burdened and guess what, we feel burdened because it is a burden. That is normal. That is how long term care actually feels and that is how long term care should actually feel. Like the woman in the nursing home, find your spot and cuss away.