Dementia

Yesterday I spent some time with my aunt. Barbara is demented with Alzheimer's Disease. She is very happily housed in an assisted living facility. 

Barbara's dementia is fascinating to me as a nurse, a nephew and an aging person. She is 89. I am 62. Her eyes display a clarity of in-the-moment awareness that is rare. The content of her speech tells me that she has no idea who I am, but she is intensely interested in who I am. There is still an obvious confidence in her about who she is, but she has no retrievable history, no snapshots most people rely upon to identify themselves. She is Barbara. She is the person in the moment. That's it.

How does a woman who was an obsessive bookkeeper for a major corporation for four decades become so happy without any accessible details about her own identity? Is her dementia a form of liberation? Her longstanding depression is nowhere to be found. Her haunting rumination about her past has evaporated. 

I didn't stay long. Barbara certainly didn't need me to. She was as happy to say good-bye as she was to say hello. She was floating in the stream of time without resisting its current. I am still trying to row and steer with or against time's currents. I had things to do. Barbara had only to be.

Learning to accept and not fear the totality of being a human animal is part of growing up and growing old. Barbara is a teacher without effort. She is totally dependent on others, yet totally free.