Memories That Alzheimer’s Cannot Take

I use to love watching seniors drift back into their history as they listen to the music with a beat of a memory. It is the yesterdays that the Alzheimer’s disease cannot take from them.

I once watched a woman drift into a moment in time and she stayed there for what seemed to be an eternity. As she stared into space like she was no longer in the same room, I began to wonder.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

The woman in the wheelchair opened her eyes and gazed up at me; her tiny nose pointed upward as she blinked her eyes and shook her head side to side just a little as if to wake up from a well-deserved nap.

“I’m dreaming,” she answered with a sigh, and with that reply I smiled and watched her drift back into a time past. Automatically my mind began to wander back into time with her as I caught a glimpse of what I thought could have been what she was dreaming about.

She was content with the same smile but sitting on a wooden dock, long slim legs hanging over the side of the splintering planks; they were swinging back and forth reflecting images of the bottom of her feet in the water below. Next to her was a young man sitting close by her side. His legs were completely still. He was sitting like a statue, staring at her shiny brown hair in awe. His eyes were aglow with the kind of love that leaves only the shadow of a man in the sunlight. His smile had a bright sparkle and it deliberately showed his own dreams for the future.

As the guy and girl basked in the sun together their ears were listening intently to the background music being played on a little red transistor radio that was perched up against one of the posts of the dock close behind them.

“Moon River, wider than a mile. I’m crossing you in style, someday.”

The only other sound was completely silent to the human ear --- the beating of two hearts and the rhythm of no worries, no cares.

When the song ended, the woman in the wheelchair came back to the present moment; her lover long vanished from the photo album in her mind. You could tell she was a bit disappointed upon awakening but you could feel the once-lived contentment wavering in the wonder of her aura. I believe that the Alzheimer’s disease cannot take true emotion away from anyone’s hearts.

Watching seniors is part of my job. I teach dancing in a chair, sometimes with musical instruments and props and have done so successfully for sixteen years. I watch seniors dream every day and I watch them capture the memories that the Alzheimer’s disease cannot take from them. Visions are abundant on most days --- I see them getting dressed in their minds to hurry out the door in time to catch that first dance of the night. And many times I wonder what it would have been like to watch them twirl and spin their partners on the wooden dance floor till the early hours of the next morning.

I watch their eyes open unexpectedly from a deep sleep for no reason after they hear a song familiar to them and I often think it is one particular note that awakens them and nudges them into one more visit with the past --- a history that is still very much alive within them and much stronger than their disease.

Once I observed a woman just sitting week after week with absolutely no response to a single note of music. Suddenly and without notice, she opened her eyes and responded one day to a song only after I took her hand and placed it into the hand of a blind man next to her. I remember thinking --- this is what the Alzheimer’s disease cannot steal --- the soul of a person connecting intimately with another human being because of the sense of touch; the electric energy that we all feel but yet ignore until we see an experience like this one.

Silent Night became a holy night the day I watched a woman awakened from her impaired memory just in time to sing the verse, “Sleep in heavenly - Peace.” And then she smiled, like she knew exactly what was transpiring and then closed her eyes again. I imagined she was dreaming of Christmases’ past and drifted back into the unspoken memory of time. Perhaps she was watching her children toss and turn in their beds as they tried to fall asleep on Christmas Eve. And maybe she was singing softly to them as she watched them try hard to close their eyes and keep them closed. And yet another celebration took place when a woman sang Ave Maria in Latin - word for word, start to finish like she was an old-fashioned schoolgirl singing in a choir at her local church.

Then there was the woman who opened her eyes and announced that I was playing Bach, and if she had been on a game show she would have won the grand prize. And last but not least there was my mom. She was a terrific dancer in her younger days. My Aunt Pauline once told me that my mother saved all the money she could so she could buy different outfits to wear when she went out dancing four to five nights a week.

She, like many other people who listened to the music of the big band era developed the Alzheimer’s disease as she aged. Through the years I watched her drift in and out of her life. I think she probably did as much dancing in her wheelchair as she did when she was younger. Sometimes when she was completely silent, staring out into a room full of people, I often wondered where she was in time and what she was doing.

On November 13, 2006, I tried to sing my mom peacefully into heaven for as long as I could. I told my mother if she went to heaven that she would be able to dance again, just like she did when she was young.

As I sat holding her hand, part of me hoped she would let go so I could see the smile upon her face as she entered the heavenly side of her once-lived life. I sat by her bedside and repeated with diligence, “Mom, go to heaven, you can have anything you want there.”

At 10:00 p.m., I kissed my mother good-bye and told her I would see her tomorrow. All of me knew I was lying but I had to create a justification for myself because I had to go home so I could get up and go to work the next morning.

She died an hour after I left and that convinced me that the Alzheimer’s disease is tricky but in no way smart. This disease did not take my mom’s most precious emotion. Underneath her memory loss, her motherly instinct was not at all distant and surely not forgotten. She was still my mom and up to the time she left this world she was still protecting me, the baby of the family, from bad things in life such as dying. She did not want to die in front of her baby. I was her youngest child.

Looking back into her life and the lives of others, I know that the Alzheimer’s disease can steal many things --- I see it every day. But I do know that this disease cannot take what matters the most in life --- the love in their soul, the passions most dear to their heart, their human instincts and their fondest memories of the people they love.

In addition, I believe that it is the emotion love that gives them a strength that builds an escape plan so they can be wherever they want to be. And when they dance into a moment of a distant memory, that is what the Alzheimer’s disease cannot take from them -- it is the yesterdays that keep them alive.

If you have ever wondered where an Alzheimer’s patient is or where they go when you think they are not there --- I can assure you that they are there. Perhaps not in that present day but dancing with someone they love, holding hands with a friend, singing a song of joy with their children or maybe protecting their children from the darkness. Some of them get up at 6:00 a.m. to go to work, they make supper for their family, they decorate for the holidays and each one of them experiences what matters most to them. And as they go back into the history of their mind, they do so with the essence of their very soul. And their soul is what this disease cannot take from them.

©2020 Karen Lea