I resigned from crazy as a lifestyle at the beginning of the 1970s.To do this, I needed a source of income besides my customary drifting from gig to gig or working in ORs.
I was living settled and transitioning to a steady and serious life as a college student. Returning to the operating rooms as a surgical technician was out of the question due to the on-call hours at night. I tried it for a while but calls kept coming in for emergency surgeries during classes.
At a friend’s suggestion, I decided to try working as a home care worker for older people. After several short-term assignments, I interviewed with a family whose father had dementia. I became their father’s daily companion for almost half a year. I was with him Monday through Friday, from eight to four in the afternoon, when his daughters returned from work. Afterward, I would hurry home, eat, feed my cat, and then attend evening classes at Boston University.
The Doc, because he was a retired Obstetrician, was a crusty gentleman who only recently stopped seeing patients. At home his downstairs office was exactly the way it had been when he saw patients. And it was here that he and I spent hours each day as he waited for patients who failed to arrive. We filled some of the time “talking shop.” I was his private scrub nurse, and he wanted me prepped for cases we’d see at the hospital. I could fall into this role because I was familiar with the universe of surgery, its tools, terms, and tendencies. All this seemed exceptionally normal until mid-afternoon or so. He became delusional when the sherry came out from the pantry.
Now you should understand that I worked for the daughters. Their instructions and parenting style were to allow him to live his everyday life as much as possible, including his afternoon sherry. But the sherry started very vivid images of his old neighborhood in Boston.
Vivid? Very. And he was an exceptional word and image crafter. Over the months, I became acquainted with his old neighborhood to the degree that I visited it and found many of his descriptions spot-on. He could stand in the doorway of his suburban home and describe the street scene in Boston.
I stopped taking care of the “Doc” when my school schedule changed, and his afternoon sherry became too much for me to limit, as instructed by the daughters. But I came away with an understanding that dementia is not just crazy behavior. It often echoes who we are and who we were in intriguing and revealing ways.
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“Who we are and who we were.” I saw that in both my mom (shudder) and my Aunt Martha. In my mom’s case it was (to me) hurtful, filled with pathos, and very sad — also, fortunately, brief. In my Aunt Martha’s case it was touching and deeply meaningful — and slow progressing.
A great post. Very wise of the daughters and you to live in his world rather than trying to convince him it no longer existed. A lot of wisdom and kindness in there.