Waiting on Memory

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It makes no sense if you pay attention to the words. But if you listen instead to the tone and the voice patterns, if you look at the body language, it seems very much like a conversation. He asks. She answers. He comments. She comments. They take turns. They look at each other. Clearly they are connecting.

We are so focused on words, Kitwood says, that we have forgotten how to communicate without them. More than that, we think there is no communication without words, which means that we believe we can’t communicate with those who, in the later throes of Alzheimer’s, have lost most of their language.

These sentences Hayes and Frances M. say to each other may not make sense as conversation, but there is meaning here. Frances M. stops fidgeting. Hayes stops calling for help. They are getting something out of this moment.

I go over and give Frances M. a hug. She is not ordinarily very huggable. “You’re having such a good day today,” I tell her.

“I’m a human being today,” she says.

After losing her mother to Alzheimer’s disease, Oregon writer Lauren Kessler went to work as a caregiver at an Alzheimer’s facility, seeking a better understanding of the disease. Her experiences are the subject of Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer’s (Viking, 2007), from which this excerpt is drawn. Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of the Penguin Group (USA) Inc. A version of this excerpt previously appeared in Oregon Quarterly (Autumn 2007).

Photo by Shutr, licensed under Creative Commons.

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