Our nation is facing an epidemic of Alzheimer's and it’s not until it touches your heart that you realize just how devastating the disease is. My grandmother deserved to relax during her retirement after her exhausting life as a full time registered nurse who was widowed when the oldest of her five children was ten. Over the past six years, I have watched my grandmother's memory fade and her vibrant soul seems to have gradually escaped her body. I visit often, knowing that each time I do, more of her memory will fade by the time I return.
Just like many of the 5.4 million Americans who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, my grandmother lives in a dementia unit in a sweet, small nursing home where we can find peace in the fact that although she is not at her home, where she often asks to be, she is safe and taken care of. During each visit, it became routine to say hello to the other residents. When we began to talk with them more often, we learned about their lives and quickly became attached. Visiting my grandmother was no longer about just seeing her, but about seeing the other residents in her unit. We met their families and learned about the person they had been before dementia ate away at their brains.
When residents are feeling anxious or bored, the nurses will often hand them a coloring book. My grandmother has never cared for coloring but a man named Stanley in her unit did. All Stanley needed to smile was a pack of crayons, preferably green, and a coloring book. He would hum and smile and color all day if you asked him to. I would sit and color with Stanley, and he taught me about a kind of love I had never felt before. Stanley taught me that sometimes all we need to be happy is a little bit of company.
Jamie Tworkowski, the creator of To Write Love on Her Arms says, “You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.”
Stanley’s roommate, George, was an elderly man who always asked for his wife. He would ask for her in the morning, in the afternoon, at night, and even if she had only left from her visit twenty minutes earlier. George didn’t like coloring as much as Stanley, but he enjoyed talking about his wife and how much he adored her when she wasn’t there. Her absence broke his heart but her presence did the opposite; it captivated his soul. I watched him call her once and when she answered he said, “I miss you terrible.” She answered kindly and said, “I will be there as soon as I can, sweetheart.” George and his wife’s love taught me that true love really is in sickness and in health even when there is no chance of him coming home to her.
When Stanley and George passed away, it was bittersweet. It’s calming that they are no longer suffering, but devastating because I believe our world was a better place with them in it. They taught me compassion; I didn’t care about them because I had to, but because I wanted to. I didn’t sit with Stanley to cheer myself up or speak with George because I wanted to learn how to maintain a marriage with a love as strong as his, but I ended up doing them simultaneously.
I have made new friends at her nursing home and as hard as it is when their time to leave this earth comes, talking to them is always worth it. The Alzheimer's unit taught me compassion because it taught me to love in new ways.
