At Least I Know My Name

My wife Margaret and I will have been married for 55 years this Nov. 3rd. Some time ago she was diagnosed as having Dementia, this horrible affliction was also the cause of her father's death in Ireland, (Named Senile Dementia there) We have two married sons who visit us often, and several good friends she doesn't remember. As she is incapable of describing a day in her life I have penned what I believe to be a very accurate rendition of such a day from her point of view. I had originally intended it for our family and best friends only, but I am now considering making it public in the hope of assisting caregivers who have loved ones who are afflicted with this awful disease. This affliction completely robs a person of a loved one who is sitting beside them with most of their faculties, except for one of the most important: MEMORY! Gone is the ability to reminisce about things that you and your loved one shared, unique to only two people in the whole world, and shared by only a favoured few. I don't want this to be a doom and gloom thing, just having the person at hand with your own memories of how s/he would have reacted in better times is a great comfort, so my advice to all you caregivers out there is, make the best of every day and love your patient like there is no tomorrow. An Old Man Sleeps In My Bed. An old man sleeps in my bed and when I ask him his name he says, " John", and when I ask him ,"John who?" he says "John Hunter", but I know he isn't John Hunter. John Hunter has hair, this old man is bald. I am pretty sure I married John Hunter a long time ago and I am pretty sure we had two little boys, but I don't know where he and the two little boys went, I haven't seen them for a long time. The old man does the cooking and gives me a tablet in the morning. When I ask him what the tablet is for he says it is to help my memory, I tell him my memory is better than his, at least I remember that my name is Margaret Hunter. I do like the food he cooks, I know I used to cook and when I tell the old man this, he says that is true, and that I was the best cook in the world, but then after he retired, I retired too, so now HE has to do the cooking. Most days we go to the park for a walk, but before we go the old man tells me which clothes I should wear because I don't want to be cold. I have a favourite pair of shoes and the old man kept telling me that I shouldn't wear them as the soles were falling off, so we went to a few stores but I didn't like the shoes they had, none of them had laces, and I told the old man I didn't want any new shoes falling off my feet when I was walking. One day I put my shoes on and he didn't complain, he told me he had glued the soles back on but he didn't know how long they would last. I don't care as long as I have my favourite walking shoes. When we leave the house we go to Tim's and get a coffee, but don't' drink it until after our walk because the coffee is too hot. Sometimes we get a veggie sandwich too, then when we finish our walk we sit in the Van and have lunch and just listen to the radio, or on really nice days we sit at one of the tables. I just love it at the park, the old man takes a little plastic container with bird seed in it to feed the Swan, her name is Duchess, and when he calls her she swims up to him even if she is at the other end of the pond, and if there are any little kids around he tells them to take a big handful of the bird seed and they feed the birds and laugh and have fun. I love seeing the little children, and when the Mums stop I talk to the little ones and smile at them and sometimes they smile at me too, it really makes me feel very happy. The flowers in the park are beautiful and so are the leaves that fall off the trees, I usually pick quite a lot of them, they have such lovely shapes and colours, I bring them home and put them in a glass of water to see if they will grow. The old man says he doesn't think they will grow, but says he was born in Glasgow which is a big city, and he didn't see many flowers when he was a boy………So what does he know. I can smell many really nice odours when we walk in the park, I keep asking the old man if he can smell them too, especially when we go past the place where there are many, many roses, but other places too, like when we are on the Boardwalk and all the vegetation around the little creek has special smells of their own. I don't think the old man's sense of smell is as good as mine After the walk we sometimes go to some stores and the old man buys groceries and other things, I don't even bother with what he is buying, I'm just glad I don't have to do the cooking anymore. Too boring. After we finish shopping we go home again and I usually sit outside on our veranda, which overlooks the creek, and watch the birds, and some days I can hear the children who live on the other side of the creek laughing and playing and I really enjoy that. I can't see them in the summer because of the leaves on the trees, but I do see them on good days in the winter and that is a bonus. Some days the old man invites two people who he says live next door for Happy Hour, Al and Jean, I can never remember their names, they are really nice people, and some days we go to their house for Happy Hour and when I leave their place to go home I am always surprised that we only have to walk next door and don't have to drive home in the Van. The old man makes supper and we eat at the kitchen table and watch the television news, I don't like the news too much, too many bad things happening. After supper I tidy up and the old man goes downstairs and when I finish up I go downstairs too. The old man fixes up my favourite chair with a cosy comforter and my footstool and we watch some TV. I sometimes go to sleep but I don't mind because I feel very cosy. When he tells me it's bedtime we go upstairs and he always makes me put the drops in my eyes and stays with me until I do, so that he can put my eye drops in the cupboard, this annoys me sometimes, but he told me that I have misplaced the eye drops a few times and we had to buy new ones because he couldn't find them and that the Dr. has to make a new prescription sometimes and that can be a bit of a bind, Bla, Bla, Bla. He's always complaining about something. He does help me get ready for bed though, he does know where my clean nightgowns are, and even though I am not sure if I should be sleeping with a strange man, when he comes into bed he usually reads for a little while, and I can snuggle up to his back because he is always warm and it makes me feel very cosy. Good Night!

 

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