Posted 1/21/22 starting at about 1:12:22, give or take.
But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Jude 1:20-21
Did you go to church camp when you were a wee lad/lass? I sure did! I LOVED IT!!! Some of my most fond pre-teen and teen experiences happened at Camp Galilee, in Eldorado Springs, Mo.
It was beautiful. It was in the woods, in a semi-scary, slasher film kind of set of cabins. We raided the girl’s side of the camp and scared them and/or played tricks on them nightly, all in a terrible attempt at wooing them. The camp had a really nifty pool with a lifeguard named Fred who loved to bodily throw us into the water. (So much for the “Don’t run at the pool” whistles the public pool lifeguards taunt us with!) The camp was a week-long affair, culminating with a talent show and a final ceremony/revival kind of session. Amazing and soooooo fun! We did crafts. We chased animals. We rowed a boat in the big lake/pond area. We held devotionals. We burned campfires. We played 4 square or and tetherball, the latter of which trained me to be the second-best tetherball player at my public school…and the best player knows who she is. 🙂 But one thing that we did that was very fun…and made me think of dementia in a weird, Mark-like way, was sing really weird camp songs. (Breaking out the dusty shoehorn to squeeze this into a dementia piece)
Things My Camp Songs Remind Me About Dementia
Song #1:
This is more like the words we used:
O’Reilly is dead and O’Leary don’t know it,
O’Leary is dead and O’Reilly don’t know it,
They’re both lying dead in the very same bed,
And neither one knows that the other is dead.
Va-Rum, Va-rum, Varum rum rum.
- I have been mourning mom’s passing for a couple of years, yet she is very much still alive. The old mom has been gone long enough that I struggle to even remember that version of her. This double mourning makes this disease double suck.
- I wonder a lot when mom lost the ability to stay present and fully understand the Venus Fly Trap of dementia that she landed on. Two clues: The first may be my imagination, but this is the last picture she drew me: LINK (below too). Take a close look at her picture and the words. Feel free to laugh, cry, or something in between about the words and my Seussical interpretation of them in the article. Was she trying to tell us that the old person is gone and the new one has arrived in that picture? Look at it closely. It is on my fridge to this day… The second came one early visit to the memory unit when she asked me a question that abso-freeking-lutely haunts me to this moment: “Son, is there something wrong with me???” Here was that article if you are a glutton for punishment like I am a glutton for chips and dip: LINK
- Last thought: Just a reminder: We are ALL terminal. Some of us are just more terminal than others. Get your life right with your Lord, and do it today. Mom did. She made a profession of faith at a church camp a long time ago…and then realized about 15 years ago that her motive for that decision wasn’t right and placed her faith in Christ and was baptized then and there. Be sure that you are sure.
The second song (Grey Squirrel) wasn’t super dementia-oriented– as if the others were ;)–but here are the words of it are as follows:
Grey squirrel, grey squirrel swoosh your bushy tail.
Grey squirrel, grey squirrel swoosh your bushy tail.
Hold a nut between your toes.
Wrinkle up your little nose.
Grey squirrel, grey squirrel swoosh your bushy tail.
- I used to sing a version of this song to at least one of my kids growing up as part of a going to sleep ritual. 🙂 We learned it at camp, though, because if we were late getting to chow time, we were forced to sing it with full body motion in front of the whole camp. We even had a bit added by the crowd that said “Around the table, you must go, you must go, you must go! Around the table you must go, naughty naughty squirrel!” and you have to circle the table until the singing ended. The dementia tie in is fear of humiliation. We would Carl Lewis sprint once we heard the dinner bell to keep from getting gray squirreled! Oh, the horror of the thought would have been as scary as Friday the 13th! In dementia, the fear of humiliation is extremely motivating too…motivating to isolate. Due to the cultural norms and the terrible sin nature of man, people actually tease a wonderful person, made in God’s image, for forgetting or making mistakes that are out of their control. This is savage and NEED to change. My good friends Chris and Theresa introduced me some time back to a group called Dementia Friends. This group does a lot for people stricken…and it works to change these stigmas and make the world more dementia friendly.
- Gray versus grey- Isn’t it funny how easy it is to forget something in the busyness of life. Typing GRAY then second-guessing myself and changing it to GREY, then back again 26 times before Googlng it reminds me of a drop min the bucket of dementia. Except they have no Google from which to draw. 🙁 Change “GRAY or GREY” to something else like “How to get home”, which is just as likely, and you see the issue clearly.
- We love the familiar– My girl wouldn’t sleep without seeing me wrinkle up my little nose a few times. (I feel terrible I didn’t do this for my son too…we got in a routine and I probably, inadvertently seemed to favor one over the other because of such. 🙁
My last camp song was this one:
Old Mister Johnson had troubles of his own
He had a yellow cat that wouldn’t leave its home;
He tried and he tried to give the cat away,
He gave it to a man goin’ far, far away. But the cat came back the very next day,
The cat came back, we thought he was a goner
But the cat came back; it just couldn’t stay away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea
- There isn’t a super tie-in to dementia here other than to say that mom loves the underdog. She loves restoring an injured one to health, being kid or cat. She would always expect that we would be ok. Sometimes we did stupid things that our parents probably thought we were goners too…but we always came back. 🙂
- I do think of the challenges of repetition in dementia, though, in 2 ways. One repeating words/phrases/questions…over and over and over and over. This is a very challenging thing for the mental health of the caregiver. Please, friend, don’t explode. They are broken. They may want to know the answer. They may have forgotten that they had asked. They may want reinforcement. Take a few cleansing breaths and repeat it…or lovingly redirect and change the subject on ask #5280. I also think of repetition in the realm of routine. I have heard it said that routine reminds someone of a RUT. Allow me to ask you, with love, to right that. A routine, to a person with this brain bandit, isn’t a rut, it is a route…to peace. They need something familiar on which to cling in their daily schedule. Keep the day scheduled. Do something new here and there, perhaps for your own mental health, but never forget the route to their peace: routine.
- Last is morbid and, perhaps rude…but know my heart…I sure don’t mean it that way. It is super natural, as a caregiver, to get tired and pray that the Lord takes them home to heaven. It is not mean. It is not cruel. It is the Christian life-prepared plan. They will be better in heaven some day. Rest with them in that solid reality… Love them with all you have in the meantime, but give yourself grace if you wish it over. You just want their suffering to end.
I could have discussed mom’s love of music in here too, but I have already beat that topic to death. 🙂 She loved our songs at camp, though…and she loved us even more.
Oh, those sweet camp days. 🙂 Can’t you smell the cornbread?
#EndALZ
#RunninTilImPurple
Update- I missed yesterday’s visit due to being concerned about Covid. I have been away for a couple of days and have isolated myself at work, so I will swing by tonight. I will tell her some camp stories while I am there. 🙂
Runnin’ Til I’m Purple II update: I have run a 5k or completed 30+ minutes of cardio 52 days in a row now. I need to start stretching out my mileage soon…only 5 months left until my June 20/21 two-day run. Here is my donation link if you could slip these two organizations a little coin: LINK
