A man has shared the anguish he felt after his mum admitted to murdering a childhood friend on her deathbed – and exactly what happened after her confession was made
A man got the shock of his life when his mother confessed to murdering her childhood friend on her deathbed. Devastated by what he was hearing, he says he tried to ask her questions about it but couldn’t get any more information out of her.
He shared the harrowing news with other family members and nurses working on her ward – not knowing whether he should contact the police about this admission. Taking to Reddit’s ‘What is the most disturbing deathbed confession you’ve ever heard?’ thread, he said: “My mother started confessing to killing her friend when she was a teenager.
“She had been senile for about a year and usually didn’t talk much but she was speaking directly and clearly. Her story was very detailed and we were just sitting there horrified.”
However, after spending the afternoon in a panicked state, someone came in to speak to him about the situation, seeking the full truth as it was ‘so out of her normal character.’
He added: “A few hours later she was back in a more sedated state and someone figured out it was the plot of a book by an author she loved.
“I don’t know how much she was aware of anything at that point, she died early the next morning, but she would have absolutely laughed her s*** off if she knew what she did to us.”
While some users couldn’t help but laugh at the misunderstanding, others spoke about how situations like this happen more often than many realise.
One user said: “One symptom of dementia is confabulation. [People with dementia] make up things. Or put differently, they remember things that never happened. I have a relative [with dementia] who tells convincing stories that involve me. They’re fiction. She’s filling in gaps in her history that don’t exist anymore.”
Another user said: “I went to see my mum in the nursing home and the receptionist said ‘I’m surprised to see you. Your mom told us you were in jail up in Washington because you murdered seven people yesterday and you’d likely be locked up for weeks.’
“Mum also complained to me that the staff was taking her to India on the weekends. Her life got a lot duller once they got her UTI under control.”
UTIs can cause confusion among the elderly and people with dementia as a result of the inflammatory response triggered by the infection.
A third user said: “My dad once described in great detail a circus train and the people to set it up and all the animals, and jeeps apparently, that he was seeing in the parking lot outside the rehabilitation facility he was staying in at the time.
“It was all very extensive and kind of amusing. The UTI is quite the hallucinogen!”
