BREADCRUMBS

Remember the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale “Hansel and Gretel?” If you recall, when the family treks into the woods, Hansel takes a slice of bread and leaves a trail of bread crumbs for them to follow home.

As we age, memory fades and we would do well to arrange for a similar trail of breadcrumbs… to get back to the story from which we’ve drifted, to get back home from an errand which has placed us on an unfamiliar road, or to get back the elusive memory we are struggling to remember.

In her article “The Transformative Power of Memory,” Sarah Greydanus

gives us a glimpse of why we cling to our ability to remember.  Memory, she posits, is the way we understand the previous chapters of our lives, and does much to determine how we see ourselves and our world.

Memories can preserve wholesome and precious times, which become treasures to enrich us in the future.

 “On the most basic level, our good memories are important because we should appreciate our blessings. Someone who has forgotten the beauty of his past is much poorer than he could be.”

”The fortifying power of good memories is especially necessary when the present is grim… memory of a better time may indeed save him, reminding him that life can be better and encouraging him to keep hoping for a better future.”

When I began to investigate the concept of fading memory, what I understood about this phenomenon is that each person I know clings to the person he/she knew him/herself to be.  The beginning of losing that identity seemed to me to be the point at which fear can, and often does, overtake all emotion thus rendering irrelevant all rationale.

But I wanted to learn more.  I asked an artist friend of mine, whose heart is as big as her talent, about her Sunday volunteer work.  She ministers to dementia patients through art.  She recounted her observations through stories of the patients to whom she so lovingly tends.  I include them in their entirety, as their witness is more powerful than any medical explanation or textbook outline.

They know their memory loss acutely. It is memories that make them who they were at one time, and who they are now. Their memories give them their identities. They are very anxious that I know who they were; it is important to them that I understand exactly who they have been in life, and to not see them as they are now. They know acutely their aging process, and, although they accept it, they plead for me to see them as they were in the earlier part of their lives. For my part, I ask a lot of questions about their lives as I work with them. They like that. 

One woman in particular, Barbara, is very hard on herself. She is 87. She was quite artistic as a younger woman, and has the walls of her little apartment adorned with her paintings. Now, suffering from palsy and old age dementia, she can barely paint anything. I often hold her hand and guide her as she works.  She gets SO FRUSTRATED with herself, and is constantly putting herself down for her inability to paint.

I listen to her stories about her paintings from years past, listening to the same stories over and over. And I allow her to vent; she is disgusted with herself now when the brush and paint won’t obey what she wants them to do! I soothe her and try to spin a positive, of course.

Her ability to paint well in the past gave her an identity. She was an ARTIST! She has lost that, and yet doesn’t want to be defined by her abilities (or lack thereof) presently. She feels the loss of her identity in a deep way. It is the loss of herself.

Basically, that is the underlying theme in what I have observed in my little gaggle of attendees. In a sense, the years have robbed them of the very essence of themselves, and they are physically and mentally reduced. They know it too. Their bodies no longer do what they would like them to, and their minds have memories that come and go. They experience a lot of frustration about that.

Another lovely lady, Janet, is a sweet and tiny Japanese woman who escaped being in the infamous internment camps because her father was a soldier in the US Army. She wants to talk about the details of her past life, of who she was, and she looks for a connection with me as she speaks, wanting me to see her, not as she is now, but as a younger woman and all that she accomplished. It is important to her that I see her as a peer, someone just like her, who lived a life and still can relate to me. She has begged me to come to her room after the sessions. (Almost all of my students want me to go to their apartments. And I go, because it means a lot to them.)

I went to her room once. She wanted to show me her wedding kimono. GORGEOUS! That is a work of art, and probably worth tens of thousands. A museum piece. That kimono is a link to her past. She worries that her daughter won’t take it after she is gone. It is a part of her, a part of her history. She wants people to care. 

Pauline is my age, but lost her physical capabilities and some mental cognition due to a stroke at age 43. Now she is a quadriplegic. (She can move one hand somewhat.) It is important to her that others see her as still accomplished. She comes every session and tries her best, and has carved out a niche for herself as quite a serious artist, in our little group! Due to the stroke, she has some trouble with her vision, and, as I said earlier, some cognitive issues as well. She lost her former life, but has carved out this new one. She is quite remarkable. 

Al is a retired Army sergeant. His memory fades in and out. Interestingly, all his paintings have something to do with veterans: the landscape project I present morphs into a veteran’s cemetery with tiny American flags all in rows, the seascape painting that I am teaching becomes a vista with ships bearing the American flag, and so forth.  He proudly describes stories of his past life in the Army, who he was, and what defined him. Now I always greet him as “our own private American hero”, and I always thank him for his service. He wants to be remembered as he was. And appreciated for that. Not as he is now. He is 91. 

There are stories for each of them! 

Love them

Each of us has such stories as these within our own circle of family and friends.  We may feel fear in trying to approach, or even live with, their declining mental faculties.  So how do we cope?  Do we allow fear to paralyze us and turn our attitude negative?  After all, aging is a relentless reality.  We are on a one-directional march with our contemporaries which can define us like nothing we have ever experienced before.  The mirror does, in many ways, go from friend to enemy.  The clock and the calendar are one-way tickets to a future where vitality ticks away and health takes unexpected, often unpleasant, twists and turns. And then we begin to forget.  Occasionally at first, more frequently as time passes. 

We can easily anticipate forgetfulness, and actually assume the challenge of dropping breadcrumbs, or reminders, to enable our friends.  We can show them the same patience and compassion we would want to be shown. Because I know I would rather hear someone I love say “I will help you remember” than “You are forgetting!” or “Did you forget that again?” or “I’ve told you that already!”

We have all heard sharp, impatient and frankly unkind comments directed at a forgetful individual.  As bystanders, we can watch the heartbreaking facial expression of the person suffering scorn for nothing more than forgetting a minor detail, and likely causing the angry companion an equally minor inconvenience. 

Let’s be better than that.  Let’s put ourselves in the place of the person struggling to remember by avoiding the circumstance where they will fumble for that detail.  Let’s use humor when memory fails.  Let’s extend a kindness, a warm smile or an understanding touch.  If we can imagine the layers of benefit that memories can bring, we can also intuit the depths of torment that memory loss can cause.

I am grateful for the wonderful lesson I learned from my artist friend’s generosity of heart.  I intend to reject allowing my loved ones to go it alone, and to seek instead the courage to find ways to connect. Because I believe that we are better when we face our fears together.  We don’t have to just watch our loved ones suffer memory loss… we can equip ourselves with the most loving tool we can offer.  Breadcrumbs.  To a creative artist who realizes that her task is less about conferring her talent than extending her compassion, those breadcrumbs take the shape of a guiding hand, a listening ear, and a loving heart. 

How creative can we be to fashion our own breadcrumbs, as individual as the loved ones we encounter?  Let’s find out. Let’s gather some breadcrumbs for the next opportunity.  I think we’ll find the gesture will be received, appreciated, and never forgotten.