More Than Meets the Eye

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Archived Articles

09/03/2009 - Dementia: A Personal Reflection

By John Davis, First-Year Care Manager

It is easy for me to define who my consumers are by their deficiencies – what they lack – their inabilities and their weaknesses. It is my job to assess the extent of their diminished faculties and coordinate services that are appropriately compensatory. That is what I am asked to do and it is within those categories that I so often tend to see those seniors with whom I come into contact. In this regard Mary was no exception.

The first thing that I knew about her was that the phone was not going to be our friend. Our phone conversations almost exclusively consisted of yelled phrases. I would begin with an ineffectual introduction like, “This is John. John Davis!” And eventually move on to unsuccessful clarifiers such as “UrsuLINE!” or, the especially confusing, “The Department of AGING!” Eventually, and usually by accident, she got an idea of who I was and the reason why I was verbally berating her. Initially that is who Mary was to me, someone whose hearing had dulled yet whose mental constitution remained such that she would routinely call two to three times a morning.

Yet upon meeting Mary I was struck by the powerful reality that she was much more than what she could no longer do. Her walls were covered with smiling grandchildren, her eyes full of life, and her mind filled to overflowing with memories. Her pill box, though it often consumed the happenings of her days, did not contain who she was or the life that she had lived.

Mary is well into her tenth decade of life. As a consequence of that fact of nature the notes that I made about her ailments read as a litany of medical terminology attempting to mask the inevitable indignities that come when our bodies begin to fail. But somehow Mary seemed not to notice, or at least not to dwell on the interest that I showed to the swelling in her feet or the slowness of her gait. Mary chose to remain faithful in the little acts of life, in what she could control. She smiled. She laughed. She called her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. She bore alone the weight of explaining what her generation did and meant to those who were here now and who never heard the music to which she once danced.

While she remained faithful in the ways that she was able, the favor seemed unreturned in predictable and all too common ways. Her children and grandchildren were scattered across the country and around the world. She lived out her days within walls that were white-washed and unfamiliar and surrounded by people who knew only her diminished faculties: her body now aches constantly and bruises often, her checkbook is riddled with co-pays and ever-increasing medical bills, and her days are shrouded in the uncertainty of what ill tomorrow might bring.

Yet despite all her trials Mary remains more than a poor parody of her former self. She is a grandmother and a great-grandmother participating in the simple joys inherent in those roles. She has a granddaughter who checks up on her and a great-grandson that she brags about. She remains fiery and defiant, loving and lovable. In her mind, she is still who she has always been. It is only her body that has changed and the eyes of the young who have not yet learned to see beyond appearances – beautiful or broken – to what is.

I began this job in the hopes of honoring the aged and learning from their example. In Mary I found an opportunity for both as well as a needed reminder of who it is that we are asked to serve.