Tag: parenting

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Emotional Rescue

Therapy dogs. They provide support for cancer patients. Disabled individuals. And certainly those with dementia.

Each week, I bring Max, my eight-month-old rescue lab, to visit my mother. She and the residents at her new memory care home love this puppy. He’s just like them. He rambles the halls with restless energy. His attention span is as short as the commercials that play on the activity room’s TV. He lives in the moment like his new friends. Calendars and clocks are meaningless.

He’s the perfect remedy for dementia, bringing joy to those who are often lonely and discontent.

And now, Mom’s caregiving team has a four-legged addition.

The side effect of this prescription is as healing as its benefits: emotional support for the caregiver. Max delights the staff at the care home, too. And he helps me stay positive.

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Church Ladies

My childhood religion was faith-based. Church twice a week. Daily Bible study. A loving God.

Disease was denied. No medicine, hospitals, doctors. Alcohol and drugs were forbidden.

My world changed when my parents divorced.

Trading the blind faith of religion for first-hand life experiences with various substances was absolute freedom. I didn’t doubt God’s existence; I just forgot Him.

After a quarter-century, the experiment failed. Plunged into the darkness of addiction, I sought God again.

Something bigger than me has kept me sober for two decades. And until recently, my resentment toward religion had evaporated into the ether.

Respecting my mother’s denial of Alzheimer’s isn’t easy. She may forget people, or that she’s moved across country, but she hasn’t forgotten God.

The Universe has a sick sense of humor. We’re now attending her new church together and her joy slowly outweighs my antipathy.

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Stranger Things

My mother was once a social butterfly: artist, writer, a celebrity in her community. Her days were filled with book signings and art exhibits. Then Alzheimer’s, the uninvited guest, snuck in through her mind’s door. Suddenly, she didn’t want to socialize, attend church, go to lunch. Acting as if she were her old self summoned every drop of strength, replacing courage with doubt.

She was a stranger in her own life.

It got worse when she moved to the city where I’ve lived for twenty-five years. This world is filled with stranger things: the care home’s multiethnic staff. Cacti gardens. Javelina.

Like the gradual metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, her old self is emerging. She’s found a group of ladies to lunch and take walks with. She’s more confident. Engaged.

The actress fades away. Strangers become friends. Today, we’re okay.

Learn more about the vital role of socializing in dementia