Christmas decorations: bad for dementia

Trust you had a nice Xmas. We did, surprisingly, considering the problem hanging over our heads, and the fact that my Mum has drifted further into dementia over the past year, though continues to live at home alone, albeit supported by a team of carers and my brother and me.
           He was down at Christmas, and like me found it difficult to understand my Mum's objections to the fairly modest decorations hung in her front room by her principle carer. One piece of tinsel was hung over one of her pictures, in her eye line from where she customarily sits, and repeatedly told us she didn't like it. "What's wrong with it?" I asked, only to be told that it was "silver" and that it was "depressing".
           Yesterday we googled the issue and found that people with dementia are often unsettled by Christmas decorations, because they are unfamiliar sights and therefore fall outside their comfort zone. "Of course!" I said as I realised the simple truth of this. The poor dabs can't really retain the fact that it even is Christmas, much less understand the significance and meaning of unfamiliar decorations. We won't make the same mistake again, should she live long enough to see the next ones.
           For years now I have been predicting she will either be dead by next Christmas or at least in an old people's home, and for years she has been proving me wrong. She is 92 and a half , and I am making no such prediction for next year. Physically she seems in good shape; can walk a mile, even when it includes a modest ascent. Her short term memory has reduced to barely a minute in length, and reduces to almost nothing when under stress of any kind (such as when something happens which is out of her normal routine, like a visit to the doctor or the dentist). Two years ago she would ask me, during the course of a twenty minute drive to say, her doctor's surgery, about six times where we were going and why. The last time I took her, two weeks ago she asked me almost continuously, amounting to nearly forty requests for the reasons for her outing.
           What I will say is that my tolerance of this, at first glance maddening behaviour, has improved tremendously. She puts her cracked record on: I put on my own. Normally someone with strictly limited patience, I have really quite impressed myself.
           Have a great New Year folks, and please wish me one. I need it, like I've never needed it before.