Thanksgiving

Today is my birthday, and it is also Earth Day, but I am celebrating April 19th as Thanksgiving Day because I feel great about, and grateful for Mother's four caregivers: Marcie, Margaret, Dennis & myself. Seeing Mother get care is a big source of pleasure for me. 

Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore made a movie about life with someone who perpetually is meeting you for the first time - so did Bill Murray. There is something kind of nice about it. Mother has no idea who I am. Many of the world's diverse spiritual traditions recommend this as the preferred way of getting along with people. Forget what you know about them. You rarely run into an opportunity to see it put into practice. Mother's Alzheimers is that opportunity.

But what I want to focus on today are the not-so-secret powers of The Fantastic Four. 

There is no way to get information from Mother about what she wants and needs except to pay attention to her behavior.  We cannot reach her through her brain.  We interact with her - the person who can no longer be reached verbally - by structuring her environment.  We counter the tedium of her isolation with outings and visits. We counter the fear she must be having about her growing incapacity by prioritizing daily routine, making as much of her world familiar to her as we can.

Looking at it this way, Mother's life becomes a work of environmental art. We cannot create a new brain for Mother. We can create an environment where she can live as peacefully as possible with the brain she has left.  All four of Mother's caregivers are artists. Before Marcie became interested in holistic health, she trained for a career in graphic arts. Margaret is a working artist (and curator - she is curating a show on toy art which is receiving international submissions). Dennis is performing right now- today- doing a show on Bad Parenting at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SF. And although Marylhurst has hired me to organize their May 2009  Sesquicentennial Film Festival,  my training was in how to create films, not show them. So all four of us are interested in the magic of creation, and all four of us bring that fascination to the work of caring for Mother.