overheard in the alzheimer's facility

It's always nice to know I'm not the only one with memory problems these days. My grandmother has recently been established in an Alheimer's facility, where lunch time is always a dramatic event.

One of the patients there is a woman named Genelle, who hasn't yet realized she's in a hospital. Genelle thinks she's still back at her old job in corporate America, and every lunch hour she thinks she's chairing a meeting. As the food is served she stands up and opens proceedings by saying, "if any of you have a more efficient way of doing things, bring it up and we'll discuss it. I'm open to new ways of doing things."

So then Mildred interjects, saying, "I saw you talking to my son Damien, and I want to know what he said to you and where he is going today."

Whereupon Genelle puts down her soup spoon and says, "I can't answer your questions."

So Mildred stands up, points her finger, and says, "Just be like that! I'm leaving."

And Genelle, who still thinks she's running a meeting, says "Maybe I should just step down from running this meeting."

And so forth and so on.

What fascinates me is the patterns people keep repeating. Mildred perceives every comment through her lens of administrative power and the job at hand that needs to get done, whether or not those were the conditions she lived under when she had control over all her faculties; others in the room are living in a world of suspicion and fear of betrayal by the ones closest to them. What happened to them to make them like this? Where did they come from? Did Mildred once work under constant conditions of corporate backstabbing? Or did she just grab those images randomly from the many that percolate through our TV shows, newspapers, and pop magazines? My grandmother is in that facility, too, but their perceived world is entirely different from hers, though not any the more realistic. Hers is almost as unrecognizable as theirs. I think each of them continue to replay their inner fears through projected dramas of their own making, based on images and symbols derived from the most potent of their real-life memories.

It makes me think about the importance of making sure that whatever images you take with you into senility are beautiful, powerful, and positive. We may never be able to escape the negative patterns we establish in our active life, not even when we enter old age and dementia.