Love and Life

Reminiscing and Punding

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In a previous post I wrote about finding a little card entitled “The Art of Marriage” in Cheryl’s purse. As I unwrapped and unfolded the little package in her purse I was very aware of the fact that it was none of my business what she kept in her purse nor why she kept those things in there. Nevertheless, faced with various requests for help, like, I can’t find my black comb or I have lost my glasses, I try my best to keep up with how objects and things are pared up, associated together in her newly confused mind.

I am guilty of looking around through her stuff to help her keep track of her stuff. I have no other interest in her stuff. That is my defense when I am caught. So far so good. I have not been caught yet. She thinks I am really good at finding things. If you know who would think to look in the freezer for a comb or used Kleenex for example, then you know someone who is care giver to some person with some variety of dementia.

Punding is a term used by the Norwegians or Swedes to describe the activity of mindlessly sorting or aligning objects, often random objects, in a fashion known only to the person doing this. I believe the term means “blockhead” Swedish.

In Cheryl’s case this behavior manifests as organization of articles and documents in preparation for a meeting or some other activity. She ran the early computer tech program at Nativity School when our children went there. Having no educational background caused her to be constantly looking to others who did, attending meetings and reading articles. She was excellent I am sure simply because she was aware of her weaknesses. She also helped her mother send cards and notes to family and friends to thank or take note of various occasions such as birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, graduations or merely an invitation to dinner. To this last Cheryl has kept many thank you notes from her mom for Sunday dinners over the years.

She gets these out and sorts, re-reads, thinks about her mom and shows them to me as though she received it in the mail today. Often she will say, I got this card from Mom. Or I got this Christmas card from (whomever).

She collects these in various clumps and collections. Some are in manila envelops. Some are in small gift bags. Some are collected in stacks with a rubber band around them. Some are in stacks held together by spring clips. Sometimes they may make some sense to me, sometimes they make no sense. No chronology. The collections can be totally random.

As she looks at the cards she reminisces about the old times. I used to point out that she was looking at a five year old Christmas card. I find that unimportant to do now. The activity is totally harmless. Late in the evening she is amenable to “I can help you with that tomorrow. Let’s go to bed and rest so we are more alert to work on that.” And we trundle off to bed tired from another day.

Carpe Diem.

Complaints

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Today it occurred to me as I cleaned the Kleenex lint from the washer and dryer for the nth time, it was doing no good for me to lodge a complaint with Cheryl about putting tissues in her pocket. It also occurred to me that although I beat myself up about missing the tissues in her pocket, I will probably often miss one once in awhile.

Dementia is not a specific disease but is rather a general term for the impaired ability to remember, think, or make decisions that interferes with doing everyday activities. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia. Though dementia mostly affects older adults, it is not a part of normal aging. (from the CDC)

Drat and alas. Drat, she cannot remember to do it. She cannot remember my complaint either but will detect the disappointment in my voice and probably interpret it as anger. And alas, I will occasionally forget to look in all the pockets.

I will forgo the complaint process. It is not useful anyway. I merely causes us to pick at each other. (Forgo was the answer to the Wordle a couple days ago.)

Carpe tissue Diem.

It is May – the fourth

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I sure do not want to be grumpy today but…

We had a wonderful dinner with friends last evening. This gathering had been put off three times for various reasons but yesterday we got together. Gary showed off his wine aerator when he was pouring the wine. He told me he cannot tell the difference. His palate is older than mine and I had gin and tonic. Perhaps he was sold a bill of goods by an aerator salesman.

Everyone contributes when we have these dinners. My job was bread. Yesterday after several false starts I got two loaves of italian (my version of italian) together. They were remarkably good so I should perhaps I will note in my notebook of cooking disasters what went wrong and what I did to recover.

Leftover from the french toast leftover loaf.

Today Cheryl is very tired. She refuses to admit it. I suppose I am tired also. We did not stay out late but we did sit up and watched a PBS show to unwind a bit when we got home.

We had french toast made from the second (leftover) loaf of bread from last night. It was good again. I am very thankful that I do not have celiac disease. One reason to not be grumpy today.

Cheryl spent some time cleaning the kitchen after she had her french toast with blueberries breakfast. All the time I was worried about her. I think I am anxious for her because the last few times she has fallen, it has happened in the kitchen. This time however she moved a lot of things around and wiped counters; swiffered the floor; threw the kitchen tablecloth into the washer along with the clean one she got out to replace it with (both will be clean in soon); and then became tired and uninterested. She took her ten o’clock meds and went to lay down for a bit. When she awakened, she announced, “Today is my birthday!”.

On top of the paper is my handy white note board telling today’s events.

It is not and stupid me pointed out that it is May the fourth. I thought about – may the fourth be with you – but left that unsaid. She responded with, I wish people would stop changing the dates or some other angry anxious comment. I backed off quickly. I apologized to her and pointed out that her birthday was next week on the tenth of May but tonight we should go somewhere and celebrate her birthday.

She became calm and sat down to watch the gabfest on the View. I brought her a coke and set about putting the kitchen back together. I discovered that she had thrown the tablecloth from the table in with the folded one from the drawer into the washer and I did not catch that before tossing a bunch more towels in on top. (Damnation. I became immediately grumpy.)

I sat down to write this little story and laugh at myself. I do not want to be grumpy today.

She actually slept pretty well and later today we will probably get out and take a walk in the park. And celebrate her birthday. There is nothing to be grumpy about. We had dinner with friends last evening. It was good company and good conversation.

Perhaps I will make a cake later.

Carpe May the fourth Diem.

The Last Day of April

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A Happy Birthday celebration — a week or so early. A poorly written sonnet:

Tis the last of April, just beyond reach

is May the tenth the date of your birth

it’s said by some, it may have been breach

No matter the details, my life gained great worth

That night that we met, our story yet untold,

unknown at the time how beautiful our life;

no one but the Great One could have foretold,

the thrill in my heart when you became my wife

Here surrounded by loving and caring siblings

To celebrate another year past with great glee

I wrote this sad poem, earnest and small scribblings

with the deepest love. I hope you agree

Our life together is amazing as your mom would say

I think so too, so, Happy Birthday!

– Paul

Carpe Diem

I Have to get the Article Written

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With that thought she got up at 1:30-ish in the early morning. It has come to me that when her dreams become real, I have to just go with the flow. I tell myself that our experience has shown that this episode will last about two hours, so be patient and helpful during that time. Some might to this as a prayer but I think of it as description of what I need to do to help her get through this nuanced dream she is experiencing right now. (And Carpe The Damn Early Morning Diem. 🙂 ) I suggested that she should have something to eat and she would be more alert, her mind would work better while she was writing the article. She agreed with that and asked what we had.

I suggested cereal with a banana cut up on top and some o.j. She took her vitamins. Later after she decided a piece of coffee cake from yesterday morning would be good also, we discussed how she could get started. She looked at the two-day old paper on the kitchen table for I bit. Maybe she was thinking about what to write? She did not tell me.

I suggested we watch TV for a bit while her thoughts gelled. We watched a couple TV shows that were previously recorded. After a few minutes as was our previous experience she became tired again and we returned to bed at 3 am.

The alarm went off at 7 am and I fetched her morning meds and we returned to bed for a little longer as we usually do. Twenty to thirty minutes is usually enough for her to get moving. I fell asleep a little more soundly than ordinary.

I woke up and realized I could not hear her. I got up and put some clothes on. I searched the condo and could not find her anywhere inside. The front door was unlocked. This morning when she got up, she left the house.

Did the rapture happen? It scared me. It is my greatest fear, not the rapture, the fact that she had wandered off looking for something she could only see in her mind. Fortunately she was just outside the front door to our building and it was not raining.

Later as she was laying down to rest she told me, she was looking for anyone awake. She was scared that no one was here. She had decided to go look in the next building for anyone. She asked me if that woman who runs things here was around – whoever that may be. I left, “What are you thinking about?”, unsaid and suggested we go out and get some sun. Take a walk. Maybe we could have lunch.

I felt bad that I fell asleep again.

Carpe Diem.

A Manual for Life

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Wouldn’t it be great if there is a manual for living? Wouldn’t it be great if there is a book that tells one how to do everything. Wouldn’t it be great if there is book that tells one what to do different when something goes wrong? It would be like an appliance troubleshooting page in the operator manual.

But life is not like that. It would be great if it was but it is not. I am ecstatic when I find one of these charts because any problem I have is rarely on the chart.

In my working career I occasionally helped to create charts like these for industrial machinery but there is no such manual or chart for life. There are however lots of pious platitudes. Social media platforms are full of them.

This last one with the turtle has become my mantra of a sort. Forward is forward. Progress is progress. With chronic degenerative disease one can maintain hope for a cure, that being said, it can be more useful to accept the situation and play the hand that was dealt to you. (My very own platitude.) Forward is forward.

Carpe Diem.

Let There Be PIE

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Mavis is here building the apple pie – as I wrote on Friday. This is the end result. We took it to Anna’s house for Easter dinner. The pie dish is now in the dishwasher. All is well.

Cheryl told me today that we should get a deep dish pie pan for Mavis for her birthday.

This particular pan came from my mother’s house, so, it has some history. It also has a recipe for quiche that I think I want to try. Quiche is pie with a different flavor, savory rather than sweet.

Pardon the apple pie shrapnel

Quiche Lorraine: 1 C. shredded Swiss cheese, 1/2 lb. bacon fried and crumbled (I interpreted 1/2 16 as 1/2 lb.), 2 C. half and half or milk, 4 eggs, 1/8 teaspoon red or white pepper, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/3 C. minced onion, 1/4 tsp. sugar. Preheat the oven to 425° F and prep pastry. Sprinkle cheese, bacon and onion in pie plate. Beat eggs & blend in the remaining ingredients. Pour cream and egg mixture into the dish. Bake for 15 minutes, reduce heat to 300° F, bake 25 to 30 minutes until a knife inserted comes out clean. Let stand for ten minutes before serving in wedges.

Let there be pie!

Carpe Diem.

Laments – I Want My Old Wife Back and Maybe Our Old Life Back

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The one who I could tease a little. The person who when I would toss a teasing barb at her would toss it right back and then some. Fifty plus years of marriage let you do that to each other. We had some great times. We had a lot of fun times. We always wish that the kids will have as great a time and Cheryl and I had along the way. We were never rich financially but there was always enough to make it work out. We were and are rich spiritually, socially, romantically and personally. I suppose that is what makes her mental state so disturbing and frustrating to me in this part of our life.

I can go back and forth, staying present and grieving what is lost to us. As I think of these things and reminisce I think of the song, “As Time Goes By.” There is a British TV show of the same name with Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer. It was one of our favorites. We rarely sit for long enough to watch any TV show. Any plot line makes little sense to her so she loses interest and gets up to go organize her office. It is her form of something called punding which is a useless and senseless activity that many in her situation do.

Cheryl was the one who was super organized. She kept the check book. She paid the bills. She was hawkish about getting and keeping and filing receipts for groceries and gas and any other expenses. She preferred to pay cash for stuff. If you did not have the cash in your hand, you did not buy it. When the kids were small we went to the grocery once a month and filled the larder. When it was gone you had to wait for it to come around again. There were some exceptions of course for milk and eggs and bread but generally you had to wait. The kids learned to be frugal. They were allowed to pick their own special things for school lunch and they learned how to make it last. Even when the children moved out to have their own lives we still shopped mostly once a month.

Cheryl knew how to use a screwdriver and still does but somethings that were second nature to her are now befuddling. How to open and what to do with an email. She once put all the family information into an Access database to print addresses for birthday cards, Christmas cards and anniversary cards. She knew how to drive that simple data system. She was used to putting together other databases and accounting systems for the clients she and others had in their small computer services company. It is hard now for her to wake up Microsoft Word to write a letter these days.

She was the one who did most of the household chores. I do that now and I do not mind doing it but she would if she could stand up long enough to do the laundry, make the bed, cook dinner, bake a cake or pie or simply vacuum the carpet.

Both her motor control and mental agility are greatly diminished and she is aware of those diminished abilities and it frustrates her.

She is the one who loved to hike. My favorite memory of this is a ten mile hike we once took in March many years ago. We hiked around a lake in a Kentucky State park. It was an eight mile loop and a two mile hike to the trailhead and back. We surprised some badge earning boy scouts about five miles from no where as we sat for a bit to enjoy the view and soak up the unusually warm March sunshine that day. It is a wonderful memory. We slept well that night.

She wants her old self back too. Who wouldn’t? Her sister passed way in the pandemic. Her sister also had Parkinson’s disease. Jan had other things going on that kept her from surviving the Covid wave in 2020. She still sees and talks to Jan. Tonight she sent her a text message. Tonight she does not understand that Jan will not answer but I might be the one who is wrong about that. Jan might answer. She often does – answer Cheryl when Cheryl talks to her.

Cheryl saw Jan at the table when we sat down for dinner tonight. I have no doubt that Jan was real to her. We discussed it. She decided to send her sister a message.

It is a powerful thing to see how strongly she was certain Jan would answer. It was moving to me. She went into her office to partake in a zoom meeting with some friends. She gave me her phone to hold in case Jan would call back or return her text above. These things sometimes break my heart. I try to keep them inside.

There is still time for new memories. I am sure of that. None of us knows when we are leaving this Earth. The best thing we can do is look for the good things, look for the humor in today’s situation. It is, however, difficult on some days.

An update after I published this about an hour ago. She came back from her Zoom meeting and remarked that she had not been out this late for a while. She wondered aloud how she would get home. I smiled and said that is the magic of Zoom, you are home. I gave her a tour of the condo.

Carpe Diem.

Comedy and tragedy are roommates

– Gilbert Gottfried

I AM ENOUGH — Care for Parkinson’s

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Sometimes while caring for someone with a degenerative disease, we have occasion to doubt ourselves. To think we are the wrong person for the job. To think God must have made a mistake – surely someone else could do better. After all, we are so imperfect. Our loved one is not getting better. (We knew […]

I AM ENOUGH — Care for Parkinson’s

Whenever I am looking for alternative inspiration I read this blog.

Carpe Diem.