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It can be devastating. Someone we love begins to lose their memories. I’ve watched it with two grandparents, and since I spend some amount of time down at the local Health Care Center, I get to be around Alzheimer’s patients quite a bit. I’m pretty used to being mistaken for family, or hearing a story told to me six times over.

But in the midst of this, I’ve found a curious thing. Often, the most frustrated people are the visitors!

What’s Lost?

We usually think of memory as integral to ‘who someone is’. But what if we change our definition a little? After all, we can attach the word ‘grandma’ onto any portion of her existence. For some of us, it’s the body that’s important. For others, it’s the mind. And if we look carefully, we’ll notice that more than anything, ‘grandma’ is made up of our ideas and assumptions about ‘who she is’ and ‘how she acts’. That’s why, when she acts differently, we get upset.

How liberating would it be if we saw grandma Just As She Is? If we decided that what grandma really is is what she Is – right in any given moment. After all, what else can she be in that moment?

Dancing With the Moment

This is liberating because suddenly we don’t need grandma to be anything other than what she’s being.

Take any given conversation with an Alzheimer’s patient. If we decide that they have to make sense, or remember this memory or that, we start correcting them. “No, grandma, I’m Kenton, not Martha. No, grandma, you already ate. No, grandma, I’m not Martha. I just told you that.”

I start getting frustrated. If she’s aware of her inability to remember things, she starts getting frustrated. Soon she’s upset, I’m upset, and all for what? A vain attempt to guide the conversation so that grandma more perfectly resembles my idea of her.

What if I just have a conversation without expectations? Suddenly, it becomes sort of fun. I try to follow her words as she moves, without apparent connection, from one thought to the next. I even get to be Martha! It’s not about being insensitive — quite the opposite. It’s about being sensitive to where her mind is moving, and dancing with her motions. If our attempts at leading the conversation serve only to make everyone frustrated, then why not let her lead?

Letting People Be Themselves

Conversations like this make me look forward to going to the Health Care Center. In fact, in comparison, conversations with ‘ordinary’ people can start to seem pretty dull! When you let grandma be herself, you never quite know what’s going to come next. And for all appearances, conversations become much more fulfilling for grandma. She gets to talk and move through her mind without anyone telling her she’s doing anything wrong.

This is the magic of being in the moment, and the magic of letting people be Themselves. If we spend all our time trying to change grandma’s behavior back to ‘normal’ we’ll miss out on an amazing portion of her life. Whether or not we like it, that’s where she is right now.

Would it be so terrible if we honored her present-moment grandma-ness by letting her be herself?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 1:58 am and is filed under Relationships. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.