Fresh Memories
A Holiday and Dementia
Christmas was good this year. Decorating the house, baking and cooking felt familiar and cozy. Along with my brother bringing Mother to our house, my Sister and her husband also joined us for Christmas dinner. All six of us being together was the best gift for me. When we had a FaceTime call with my brother and sister-in-law, our niece, her husband and their two year old the circle was complete. These are the loves of my life, and we carry the memories of our joined lifetimes together.
It’s bittersweet with Mother’s cognitive issues. She doesn’t have strong connections to all the Christmases Past. The very earliest memories we now glean from photos (we’re old now and film was something more rare, and who has access to a projector? Or actually put our hands on the DVD we saved the films to?) and stories long repeated over our history. Mother can no longer pull those up and that makes me so sad, realizing that many of the little details are gone forever.
But that sadness is balanced by sharing our beautiful memories that for her are fresh again. I’ve learned to delete the “Do you remember?” statements and replace them with “You know what I remember?” With the question about her own remembering, her brain starts the work of trying to find a memory, often without a frame of reference. I picture Data on Star Trek TNG “Accessing…” in his computer of a brain and getting immediate info. For a person with dementia that accessing is work. When I share what I remember it’s not an ask for her to find something in her memory but an invitation to share my recollection. She gets to enjoy the memory with me. If that then allows her to hook into something that goes along with it that’s a delightful bonus.
One of the best things I’ve done for myself as a doula and also as the daughter of someone with dementia is taking a course with the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre. Based with the University of Tasmania, Wicking offers a MOOC - Massive Open Online Course - called Understanding Dementia. Totally Free, this self paced course is offered regularly, and I am learning so much about the disease that is helping me understand Mother and also the people I work with as a doula. I highly recommend it, and another course of Understanding Dementia begins February Visit https://mooc.utas.edu.au to learn more.
Thanks for reading my substack. I look forward to sharing much more about End of Life preparation, Death Positive Education, and Loss and Grief Support throughout the year.