A Priceless Gift

The garden's last flowers

I received a precious gift on my birthday, making it the most beautiful of birthdays in a long time. It came from a beloved member of my family, who was given the great burden of a severe-early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis, shortly after Mom died of that disease.

To understand the gift’s significance, you have to understand that severe Alzheimer’s steals not just memories, not just language in all its totality as the foundation of communicating between people. It steals the brain’s computer processor, so it can’t access stored information, filter data, recognize context, transfer essential messages, or discern logical pathways in the process of decision-making. Areas within itself are isolated from each other. The brain fights through this incredible interference to make sense of a whole world in incoherent motion, as it tries to serve its owner’s needs.

After months of withdrawal, as my loved one struggled in the aftermath that diagnosis, a birthday card arrived the day before my birthday. It was followed by a phone call on my birthday, opening with the birthday song, and then a long conversation, full of news and willingness to patiently work through spots where words would vanish, a strength of attention to hear my words. Love lived energetically in that phone call, a wonderful feat of reaching out.

At dinner with my husband later, I opened all my birthday cards, saving that special one for last. It was signed with a loving message, warm with recognition of our history together. At first I wept at the evidence of language difficulty, fleeing to the ladies room for another (brief) war with God over this. I washed my face, came back, and read the card again, this time thankful for the strength and love that glowed in its message. Sorrow can be blinding. When I wipe my eyes, I can see the tender mercies that always there.

It was a blessed birthday, rich with loving gifts from my family. I’m thankful to be part of the human experience, present and sober and wiser for the life given to me to live on this planet. May all our days be rich with reaching out, offering some simple blessing to someone else.

Where Do the Words Go?

This is my cat Mystery talking to you.

My cat can talk, but not my friend who had a brain hemorrhage last week. Oh, she can say a few words, even a simple sentence, but then the aphasia robs her of words.

Aphasia: lack of language abilities; the partial or total inability to produce and understand speech as a result of brain damage caused by injury or disease

My friend is frightened. How much of the damage will be permanent? No one knows. She has a long period of speech rehab ahead of her. Some physical rehab too, because her balance is off. Last week, she was working up a storm. She was fierce in her work. This week she requires aid to get out of bed and a walker to go a few steps.

She can’t tell us how she injured her head. She doesn’t remember. One of these days, when she’s making headway, I’m going to tell her about the four empty bottles of mouthwash. She will have trouble staying sober through this if she lives in denial. I have a theory that drinking mouthwash is a desperate act to keep from drinking booze. That theory might not fit her. Only she can say, and she can’t say right now.

Wednesday is Haiku Day at You Know…That Blog. Haiku is the perfect poem for someone who is low on language. It’s just five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables, brief and to the point. The theme this week is Dreams.

Scenes that flash quickly
Nonsensical images
The landscape of dreams


Desire to attain
Passionate unending work
Dream in the making


I have a big dream
All people are satisfied
No one is hungry


Your mind is restored
We can have conversations
An Alzheimer dream

~~~~~

I wonder where words go when you can't find them. Are they like socks lost in the dryer? Do they hide in filing cabinets in your brain? What if you couldn't find words to communicate? I can't imagine being without language.