Posted 12-5-19
Just a quickie today as I am booked to the neck with work. I thought it was cute and kind of a good reminder opportunity:
Mrs. B., a super-sweet late-comer to the Sweet 17 was sitting at our table a couple weeks ago. She always, always, always has a smile on her face…almost an unsettlingly frequent one, if that makes sense. Not creepy, just unusual. She always smiles… regardless, I knew she was a school teacher from days gone by. I asked her “Do you ever miss the little kiddos you used to teach?” She, still with smile still ear-to-ear, said loudly and proudly “No. Not at all!!! Have you every been with 30 kindergartners all day long?” She was very serious, but with a smile.
It reminded me to remind you that the filters are chipped away like molar plaque on our loved ones with dementia. This damsel in distress is pretty much incapable of speaking with nuance, as evidenced by the many other, similar things she has said. This can lead to hurt feelings. Mom used to comment about a heavy nurse…and she NEVER would have done that pre-disease. Just prepare for changes in this area! It may be directed toward you. Be mad at the disease, not the loved one. (Easier said than done, I know…)
Sometimes, however, it is a pleasant break from trying to read between the lines and other times it is sad. In heaven, some day, we will be able to freely talk without having to try to figure out if there is some sort of motive driving the conversation. Oh, and there will be no more stinkin’ dementia. 🙂
#EndALZ
Update: I had a great time with mom for a couple hours yesterday. She was tired, but pretty darned happy. She loves her fidget blanket although she has started gumming around on it more than I am comfortable with. I think it is still safe even as it weakens… Such is life…
I smile all the time and didn’t realize until me teen years people found it unsettling!!! I still smile 80% of the time but it’s a 19% improvement….
People used to always say I was so happy, but that was rarely it at all. It was my protection and force field.
Dementia is very tough. It is like a force field that sometimes obscures or distorts your view of someone, but that’s all it is…a field of illusion. When it is powered down, the real person will be there again. I know it.
The morning after my father died, I heard him in my head, doing his cartoon Popeye voice. It wasn’t like how you remember something but it was like actually hearing it. It was like the dream I was having merged into the waking world. It was so beautiful. I don’t think it was him actually communicating with me. I think it was a stored memory. But I also think it was God communicating with me, reminding me the real Don was back now.
Thank you for your comment and the reminder that God is amazing in how He communicates directly to our heart in a personal way…exactly how we need it. I completely agree with your thought about it being a distorted, field of illusion. That is especially a good analogy (or is it a simile with an implied “like”? English is hard!) because it cloaks the person in this illusion…but you can still see the shell of the old person too. Mom, albeit more haggard partially because of her teeth and partially because it has been a very hard year, still looks an awfully lot like mom(!!!)…she just “seems” more like Mom 2.0. That was the thrust of my repeated line in this poem: https://digitalcornbread.com/similes-replacing-smiles-for-now/
and that makes it even harder. If she would just change into looking like Bea Arthur, or maybe Betty White, I could deal easier with mom 2.0.as a separate “person”. However, I still struggle, at times, with looking at her and seeing the “old mom” still there. In heaven, mom, and Don, and my uncle Joe who has the disease now as well…and all of us will have shed the broken and replaced it with the unbreakable! The sooner the better. 🙂
Thank you very much 🙂
p.s. I am adding my former probably 10 year Facebook and email picture to the picture list of this post. I am a big fan of Popeye. 😉