Friday, March 02, 2018
We talked for forty years or so
She’s in Bide-a-Bit presently,
and how do I characterize
what jerks between us
when I visit?
Not talk.
What I miss most
is the feel
of each word
emerging from me, its
texture.
Labels: dementia, relationship, talking
Friday, February 09, 2018
Rowing
Apologies
for missing posts.
Chunk flew
from Memory. & roosts
elsewhere? So
Docs did the major tests
to brain, but all is “functioning”
there. For Senior, that is.
Minimally. Age-mates assent
with resigned chuckle
following incurious shrug.
Youngers? Hey! it’s
a Foreign Culture
of the Not-Quite-Dead
to them.
They’ve turned
the boat around
& row furiously
a-WAY!
Labels: brain scan, dementia, forgetfulness, maturity, Old Age, senior, youth
Monday, January 01, 2018
Cha!
-Off of what?
-I forgot.
--Just as well. Remembering overrated.
--How so?
-You get cluttered up.
-I get completely cluttered sometimes.
--What do you do?
-Start forgetting.
-That pendulum can swing too far.
-Then you must resist
the Deeee-MENT-
Cha-Cha-Cha!
Labels: dementia, forgetting, remembering
Monday, October 23, 2017
Impromptu
Her son, Mel, loved it!
Not so, daughters.
Misty spoke for both women.
“Hey! Around here, Myself and Lynn
already hafta claw the whores off our
boyfriends around here! We don't need
any whacko Mom!”
The Examiner ultimately concurred, after waiting
for the Ethel Mermanesque solo to stop. “Amazing!
That could be C over C at the end!”
That could be C over C at the end!”
“THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS! ...and no harm done, Ma’am,” defended Mel.
“Can’t agree there, Young Man. Wildly
Inappropriate at this hearing, as it would
be in church, temple, funeral home…”
Where, of course, plans are set, and
anomalies unwelcome.
Labels: Church, dementia, Family, funeral home, hearing, insane singing, insanity, Show Business, Temple
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Salty Altzy
The white lie delayed things a bit, but the
new Accountant waited still, finger poised
above iPad.
“Had to remember my cell number twice
today, and that pushed out my home number,
somehow. Uhhhh?”
Beat or two, thuds, and then Del recalled it.
Accountant acted as if it were quite natural,
but Del felt crushed.
Couldn’t even make a joke about Alzheimer
Moments etc.
What he imagined–-his personality–-was the
worst possible scenario. Like “Bury,” the
Undertaker, who roamed the seaside town
looking for fresh corpses not called in.
His daughter had caught up with him at
Murcheson Hardware, where old Clint
informed him that he’s not dead yet.
“Try in a couple of weeks, though.”
Sheila drove him directly to Dr Destiny
(name for real) at Bide a Bit.
He presently has a corner room full
of funerary knickknacks.
Quite tired each evening, since he
believes he works there.
Del leaves early that day and walks to
the cove. Sails are blinding.
His two sons arrive in daydream, bright
yet fuzzy.
“Wasting time?” asks Bink.
“What’s the difference? Long’s he
still knows he’s Dad!” adds Rentz.
They laugh. The bright sails laugh.
The whole salt day seems to.
Labels: Alzheimer, dementia, Family, forgetting, memory
Saturday, January 02, 2016
Vapors
“Borne like a vapor! Can you imagine?
Her hair! Jeannie’s.”
“Yeah, but on the sweet summer air? This is
the desert. That was the Shenandoahs or
something, where you get a bit of blessed
moisture off the trees at twilight! Oh how I miss it!
Don’t you, Gramps?"
Next day, Gramps, retaining the concept of mountain,
found an alley near Commerce Street with a gray-white
smear of one at the end.
Approached Monica, hard in a black pixie cut.
“Jeannie!” implored he.
Suddenly Sheriff Dentz drove at her, red lights spinning.
“Solicitation!”
“I didn’t fuckin say Hello!”
He gave Gramps to Deputy Alice Grimes to un-babble.
“It’s pretty about the hair and everything,” she told
Chuck when he came to pick him up. “Hey! Just
happened to think: my grandma goes to a daycare
over on Painted Horse. Her hair’s not bad, and they play
cards. Poker. For money.”
“He was a shark!”
“No greenhorns there, believe me!”
“You’ve been awful nice. And I don’t wanna drop the ball
from shyness when I meet someone nice. Some coffee or
something tomorrow?”
“No wife?”
“Left a good while back.”
“Had her reasons?”
“Maybe a thousand."
“Here’s my card.”
Gramps only said in the Jeep going home that
he guessed he "went too far, bit haywire," and things
confused him, "but it’s such a lovely lovely song! I can’t
get her outa…”
“Way it goes.”
Labels: dementia, fantasy, gambling, Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair, law enforcement, obsession, prostitution, song, Stephen Foster, Western
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Enchanted Cottage
I’m asked to visit Marlene by Clifford.
She has asked for me.
I join him there and we walk a path actually covered
with rose petals, to her Hansel and Gretel cottage.
She’s lucky there. Most other patients in wards.
Has forgotten me. So I refresh her. “My daughter,
Barbara, goes to Cornell. I call her Clancy.”
This delights her, as she bustles about the small kitchen
repeating Clancy and laughing.
Clifford and I sit on children’s chairs nearby, displacing dolls.
She brings the tea and crumb cakes, and puts the works on
the bitty table.
Pretend. A child’s tea set and little pewter plates.
We eat, she the gracious hostess indeed!
My mini cup is oft “refilled.” He and I tell her the missing
cakes are delicious.
The doll I replaced, a sailor boy, suddenly collapses,
on the sofa. She jumps up to straighten him up.
“Oh he’s just lazy!”
Raggedy Ann, we’re assured, agrees.
Marlene, before we leave, assumes the tragic adult: “O Captain,
our fearful trip is done!”
Before we get into our cars, Clifford informs me that she called
him Captain once upon a time. “But the rest, Walt Whitman.”
Unfortunately, he tells me, he must divorce her in order to
marry Rosie. “Not your Rosie,” he laughs. Who left.
My heater oddly seems to put out cinnamon later, so I stop at
the bake shop next to LA Bodyworks.
As I drive, extract a crumb bun from the warm carton.
Labels: child-like, dementia, divorce, pretend games, tea party, Whitman
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Involving Incident
THE BLUFFS CHRISTIAN HOME
Homer Shnitzman, MD
Delbert Hans, MD
Loretta Menton-Hale, MD, PhD
Two Orderlies:
-Nothing ever happened on my vacation before.
I caught a break!
-Surprised the news never penetrated the Poconos.
-Only Panic-Weather TV there. STORM OF THE CENTURY!
-Well, anyway, one of our ninety year olds grabbed
a young girl visitor. He “sprung” from Supply Room.
-Did she escape The Fate Worse Than Death?
-By kicking him in the balls, hard and repeatedly.
-Ouch, I think–-whatever is left of that shrunken package,
at any rate.
-Shnitzy wants us to sign on to new, ever-watchful regulations.
-Even if good sports crap on TV?
-That new lady Doc said the old fart had “reverted to Pure Male!”
-Did he now? Something in the water? That one’s a snip!
-The Church has declared her husband a martyr.
-Not shocked.
-What if...one of our women reverts to Pure Female?”
-Much more serious!
-Too Scary!
-God wouldn’t let it happen.
Labels: Alzheimer, dementia, doctors, God, men, mental hospital, Old Age, orderly, women
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Frontier in Language
Groping
Can't find a word.
Many friends lend
cover, alleging
we truly all etc do it,
forget and fumble.
Then, a goofy perusal of
some wooly performance
you tell to agree. Though,
sorry, Funny One, passed
the awful frontier where
sly gods of linguistics
guffaw continuously.
But, laugh along there
also. Might as well.
Labels: Alzheimer, dementia, forgetting, forgetting word, inarticulate
