A nurse working in the state psychiatric hospital system, our grandma explained that she was drawn into this work by watching her father, and later her older brother, suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease. Was it her observations or her personal light-hearted and reassuring demeanor, which led to her informing us of the “two types of Alzheimer’s: the funny kind and the scary.”
Grandma said that some of her patients would laugh at their forgetfulness and find it such a tickle to discover that they had forgotten their name, their location and what they were doing just a second ago. “Ha, ha, ha.” What a delight, every day, every hour, sometimes every minute, was a whole new adventure and “Oh, who are you again?” Grandma enjoyed working with these happy folks.
Sadly, there were other patients who would be frightened to discover that they didn’t know where they were, who you were, who they were, and become so disoriented that they would huddle or cry and be so fearful of what might happen to them. No matter how much grandma might say or do to console them, these patients would be distraught and distrustful of anyone’s attempts to assist them.
Grandma ensured me that our family was fortunate to have the “funny kind of Alzheimer’s.” “Nothing to worry about should you ever experience Alzheimer’s.”
Below are excerpts of the touching, Douglas Penick, article in the latest Tricycle magazine called “The Wall – What Remains When the Mind Goes?“
“Month by month, I forget more
and more,
Betray the kindness of those
who taught me.
I drift in seductions of fatigue and
winter mist.
I forget liturgies, poems, practices,
Drifting on the errant life force of a vacant mind.
Layer after layer falls away.
There is
This wall
Before me
Here and now. …
But I know that if I were diagnosed with a profoundly mind-altering disease, I would find cultivating a different and broader kind of mental engagement more encouraging than struggling against encroaching deficits by playing Sudoku and doing crossword puzzles. …
The sudden disappearance of a routine memory: I cannot remember the name and even the atmosphere of a nearby street I walk on regularly. I can see it as I look down through leafless trees from the window in my high-rise apartment, but I no longer know what I’m looking at. It is a blank, a gap. …
For the full article see: tricycle.org/magazine/douglas-penick-memory/ and the companion article link displayed below.
Life Matters 