Virginia L. Senders, my m-in-l, now in the dementia unit of a nursing home in Amherst, still remembers the last two lines of “Invictus.” She also remembered several lines from “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” We visited her yesterday, and I read both poems aloud to her. At one point, I unthinkingly read the word “cur-sed” as “curst,” and she said, “I believe it’s cur-sed,” and I said, “Of course!”
And I was pleased, so pleased! She’s forgotten so much, and yet poetry remains within her.
I spoke to one of the attendants at the Dementia Unit, and she (the attendant) said that a few weeks earlier, she’d had a particularly difficult day, and burst into tears in front of Ginny. Ginny beckoned the woman to her, patted her, and said, “I’m sorry you’re having a difficult day. I’m still in here.”
The attendant is a lovely woman, who loves my mother-in-law. She told me she’d googled Ginny, and was in awe of her accomplishments, and sympathetic about her condition. I’m so glad she’s there. She told me some moving things about her conversations with Ginny.
And yet, Ginny’s statement – “I’m still in here” – broke my heart.
Whenever I visit, I take clementines and chocolate, because she loves them. It’s a simple gift, and one that brings a kind of simple, sensual pleasure. This time, I took her a children’s toy as well, a soft lamb, and she took it, and placed it against her cheek and shoulder, then gazed at it contemplatively, and said, “Now, what should I name him?”
I wish I had an accessible home (not one perched on a hill, with forty steps leading up). I wish we had an elder-friendly room and bathroom attached, so we could have Ginny with us. I wish Ginny could have normal conversations with people (I prattle away about my work or about plays, or about S’s homeschooling activities with her, and it’s plainly visible to see her coming alive, remembering a few more things than at the beginning of our visit). I wish she could have daily hugs and not go to bed in a room alone, and in a strange, disconnected state of mind. I wish we had the means to care for her, or to hire someone to care for her inside our home.
Then, I think, at least she has a room of her own, comfort, predictable time-tables, good care, nursing. And it comforts me, a little.
But that nagging feeling of loss isn’t going away.
This is a society in need of a radical overhaul.
And the sadness in those lines when I think of where she is:
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”