Dear Abby: Phone calls with my sweet elderly friend have become endless, repetitive loops

DEAR ABBY: An old friend, a sweet elderly woman who lives in California (I live in New York), is suffering from some form of dementia. We keep in touch with phone calls. She lives alone. Our phone calls are important to her and to me, but our conversations, more and more often, are becoming endless, repetitive loops.

The duration of a call is usually 45 minutes to an hour. However, now that every few minutes there’s a total reset of what we discuss, my friend seems to think I’m ending the phone call after just a couple of minutes. She doesn’t remember we’ve been saying the same things over and over. The calls would go on forever if I didn’t end them.

I try to end the calls gently, but is there some way to help my friend understand, without upsetting her, that we have indeed had a long conversation and that I’m not rushing to get off the phone after a couple of minutes? -- PHONE PRISONER

DEAR PHONE PRISONER: Because you didn’t mention anything about it, I am going to assume that your friend has relatives who know what’s happening with her, and that she has a safe environment in which to live. A way to end a conversation without hurting someone’s feelings would be to say you need to do it because “a pot is boiling over” or because you “must remove something from the oven, take your pet out for a walk, have an important call coming in or need to leave for an appointment.”

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Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.