Perhaps if there is one theme to what I have learned about being with someone who has dementia, it is that confidence in what you are doing and not being afraid to take risks is a central key to knowing you are on the “right track.” Over the course of the 3.5 years I’ve been with Mom I have been afraid of many different things– We didn’t even have a wheelchair for her, as she had gone slowly about the world on a four-wheeled walker for a few years before moving home with me.
There have been a few eureka moments– but almost certainly the largest of those that didn’t involve the piano was when our friend Tom gifted us an old wheelchair. I had been very hesitant because I had suggested many years prior the idea of a chair or a scooter to her doctor– a doctor that replied it would speed up the breakdown of her muscles, and ever since I have tried to not take the easy way out of physical exertion. This was a step too far to avoid, however. Within days of trying and using the new chair we were off on a different hike to a different park at least a couple of times a week. When the weather is appropriate, this has remained the case.
The discovery of park life for Mom was one of the first “With this as a strategy, we might make it after all” changes for our lives. Mom gets very animated and stimulated by people, but even more so animals, whether human-pet or city-living wildlife. She would feed the birds at Deer Lake for hours (While adopting her teacher persona: Lectures to the loud or aggressive geese that they couldn’t have the food, attempts to talk to the quiet geese in back, etc) though that is harder to do now that the cities are trying to eliminate public bird feeding (we only used real bird food, not the poisonous bread from too many picnickers), but she can still speak with any animal that makes eye contact.
And she gets her “up” in the very same activity I can relax while undertaking. Having such a “win-win” has made it so for over six months of the calendar year we can always be only a day or two away from yet another experience for Mom that is far more natural and ‘wild’ of a setting than most places in the world contain within their city borders in terms of parks. We can almost “leave the city” for her during the day, which means stress leaves me, mom laughs and talks more and interjects to strangers randomly, and most importantly then smile that knows no guile stays on her face. That’s my job. That’s why we go to the lakes.
May 2, 2015
For five of the last seven days mom and I have gone for lovely, slow walks in some of the really gorgeous parks that she has loved for decades. Central Park, Burnaby Lake and Deer Lake are all wonderful places for feeding (with non-poisonous, proper food) various ducks, geese and other animals that she relates to. Down at places like Fraser Foreshore Park she is able to sit alongside me as we both wonder at the grace of hawks and eagles that soar about. When we get home, she excitedly tells the cat about what she saw. Mostly, she comes alive and enjoys being alive.
Then later that night she settles into bed, snug with her cat at her side, and everything is peaceful and good. And you know something? That’s not just good enough. Sometimes, that is simply spectacular.