Posted exactly 2 months before Christmas on 10-25-19
Fall has fallen…uhhh…fell…uhh..fellen/felon in the Ozarks. (Sorry…we all have those grammar areas that give us pause. I am capable of doing moderately technically sound writing despite the style I employ here.) The last two days we have enjoyed cool, rainy weather. This is my kind of rainy days and nights! It seems like this is how fall always works here. We go from a hot summer to a weekend of really cold, cruddy weather followed by a pleasant couple weeks of real “fall” followed by a savagely cold (for us) weekend in which the trees drop their leaves toot sweet. We are hitting this last transition piece this week. Grab your rake. Mow, then weatherize your mower…the time is here. Oh….I love a rainy night!
This reminds me of a camping story from easier times, some 40+ years ago. We were camping on Table Rock Lake one fall when it started raining. We fled to our tents as our primary refuge from the weather…and all was fine. It was getting dark, so we didn’t think much of the rain…we just prepped for Snoozeville and off we went to the land of sleep. Then Physics started happening about 4 hours later. We discovered that if you touch the sides of a tent while it is raining, somehow physics magic happens and what was outside flows inside. Here is a smarty-pants reason. When we woke up the next morning, we got our lesson. Someone had slept against the tent wall and we all felt the results. It was a good thing we were on air mattresses because we were stinkin’ flooded. It was awesome, funny and terrible all at once.
You know, this funny story reminds me of a brain a little. Most things do, I suppose, but I digress. Here is how:
- Our brain is the tent. It is quite resilient when treated right.
- Our brain can handle a lot of rain in the right circumstances.
- Our brain has contingency plans (sleeping on air mattresses).
- Our brain seems to rebuild itself after damage as best it can.
- Our brain doesn’t like bad storms. It prefers peace, if you will.
- Our brain is limited in its defenses beyond our skull. Its defenses do ok against the normal rains of life. Against storms, bears, arms or legs touching the sides…not so much.
- When the tent is compromised, times get rough.
- Eventually we get to go home where the rain stays out of our beds. (Sorry..I am not much of a camper in my older age. 😉 )
My main point of this article… when you have a loved one with dementia, everything seems to remind you of it. Having a good day? You think “I wish (my loved one) could experience this!”. Having a bad day? You think “I wish I could just talk to (my loved one).” Or, when you are just a bit melancholy, you think “(My loved one) would know how to break me out of this funk!”. And, what makes this particularly insidious is that your loved one could be right there, in the flesh, while you think about it. Grief visits and stays and invites a close friend, death, to come over later…but not today. Stinkin’ disease! We need a cure…and soon! The rain is falling in mom’s world, and people are rubbing the stinkin’ tent! Just like this disease to mess up yet another thing I love….
Update: Mom had another good day yesterday. Thankfully, not rocking the boat and am glad there isn’t much to report.
Here are links to the last 2 articles. My delivery service was limping and yu may have missed them. 🙂
#EndALZ
Mark, this is so beautifully vivid.
Thank you 🙂 🙁
Wow, Mark. I felt the same way about my dad during his dementia but I could have never put it in such a vivid outdoors analogy.
To piggyback on your idea, I remember one time when my parents ran our college and career class, the college group yanked down my parents’ tent poles in the middle of the night and recieved much satisfied screamings of surprise.
My dad got his revenge. 🙂 Early dawn, he drove his car near the tent of the culprits and backed up right to the cusp of the only exit, turned the car off, and left.
There was much merry screaming from the college kids….and Dad’s prank was much harder to get around, literally and figuratively.
I have seen people on TV who lose a loved one instantly. The whole tent falls in one crazy swoop and its crushing. I have never known this experience personally….
Dad’s ALS…it was like somebody had parked their car against Dad’s only exit from the tent. He was trapped inside. Couldn’t communicate. Couldn’t get out. Couldn’t die.
Good-hearted people cited Stephen Hawking and how he could use just his eyes to convey brilliance and beauty.
Dad….didn’t just lose muscle control of limbs or lids or vocal chords…..he lost his mind. And I found that wasn’t kosher to talk about…..with really almost anybody who asked how he was.
How do you tell someone that the person they remember is trapped inside their own self? How do you convince them by begging to keep coming to see that person? Pleading with them to see he is still really there?
So it was with my dad, Donovan Victor Kohler. Someone had blocked the exit to his tent. But it wasn’t a prank. It was agony.
At the time, I cursed just about everything. I hated God for a long time until I came to understand….He had always been able to get in the tent. And He didn’t leave when it got embarrassing. Or confusing. God and Don roasted marshmallows. Babbled about nonsense not even God understood. And…knowing that was who God was….changed everything for me. That He wasn’t the car parker. The reporter. The ne’er do well in the sidelines. The well-wishing mumbler. The casserole consoler. The embarrassed friend. Or the goner (all the ones who checked out of Dad’s camping spot and never came back…)
He was the tentanion. Companion-in-the-tent. And, when I realized that, I began to love God again. Not that the world isn’t f…..up. But that He isn’t and yet He can never get enough of living in our leaky tents….as long as we are stuck inside. No conditions. No back-outs. No fainting. He’s just there……in that Hell Tent. And He stays.
You probably think I am the weirdest person you ever heard from. 🙂 I am awfully weird. I’m Teej, Starr’s daughter and she shared this blog with me. I just wanted you to know, you inspired me so much , I actually texted this since I only have my phone. Anybody who knows me knows they are lucky to get a readable “I’ll be there” when I text. Shoot, I hope this doesn’t mean everybody will start expecting legible texts from me… 😉
Thank you. I needed this.
Thank you soooo much for your insight, Teej! All I can do it make the most of where I am now and look forward to her getting her tent replaced with better accommodations!