Wisps of Joy

In Remembrance

A ragbag of thoughts and rhymes

I ask her where she is; she cannot remember.
I ask her what is your name; she cannot recall.
I ask her do you still love me, and she smiles:
A wisp of joy. A ray of remembrance of her former self.

We had won, for a little while we tasted Heaven:
A little joke to pave the way, the mood to leaven
Along the rocky road of Troubles, no need for coy,
Sometimes a smiling glint in eye, a little wisp of joy.

She takes my hand and kisses it
And leans in close to me,
She faintly whispers “I ’uv ’oo,”
And I feel a wisp of joy.

We long for peace, we wait for peace,
Peace does come, between the troubles,
But we forget because we’re busy,
We wind up living in a tizzy.
But Peace is there, she waits for us
To arrive on slow-moving bus.
Peace remains a dream for much of life,
Yet Peace is there and close at hand –
All we need to do is shake her hand
And Peace will come and ease our stress.

A smile, a touch, they mean so much,
They’re each a little wisp of joy;
A photograph, a touch of lips,
Perhaps a blessing from above,
No rhyme, no reason, simply love –
A ray of sun, a wisp of joy.

Inspired by The Story of Geri Taylor, Sinking into ALZ, NYT, via MyALZteam:
“Who is that in my mirror?” I was sterred there by a friend on myzalztem.com.
You can find Geri Taylor’s story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/01/nyregion/living-with-alzheimers.html?_r=0

Also, the quotation card: “I looked in the mirror and a stranger looked out at me.”
That’s what happened to Geri, she did not recognize her own image.

I wrote a blog on that, “Somebody’s Taken Over my Mirror”, June 27-16. You can find that here:
https://hwbrycewrites.com/2016/06/27/somebodys-taken-over/

The Geri Taylor article talks of memory loss but she still had “executive function and cognitive reserve (long-time memory from long-time use) but a loss of “sequence of steps in a process,” and that the clarity moments and those magic moments with her mom were it said, “wisps of joy.”

I also wrote in my own little booklet “Remembrance of Mom,”
“We had won,
For a little while
We tasted Heaven”

It all started this way:
I ask her,
She cannot remember. I ask her
She looks blank.
Her memory board is just a plank.

I wheel her around the hallways some more
She hums the whole way
Not that it’s musical, she was never that musical,
But as part of her Alzheimer’s.
She is still there; still with me.

I wrote:
She’s small now, smaller than ever before. Slowly she seems to be getting eaten away, like the Incredible Shrinking Man, who suffers with ALS. ALS, ALZ. Some similarities. One is physical, ALS shrivels the body, while the other is mental, in the sense that the brain shrivels.
Both take away the power of speech and movement. One becomes more dependent; the other continues to contribute.
In either case, pathetic it is to see. Sometimes I think we family members and givers of care suffer every bit as much as they do. Certainly we ache for them. And yet we cherish them.

In our case, the case of Alzheimer’s, she went through stages of clarity.
Well she went through shock and surprise, fright, confusion, anger, loss, despair, slow, painful erosion of abilities, the worst of which is brain function, the loss of the Person.
We all found this in varying degrees, those of us in the care-giving trap. We all rode/ride this out-of-control roller coaster from hell.
And when clarity shone through – the remembering of a name, an awkward and painful “I ’uv ’oo,” – like a sudden sunray poking through a cloud – a wisp of joy.

A wisp of joy: a thing to be celebrated, treasured, marked with a tag of surprise and gratitude, and reward. A wisp of joy. What a blessing.

And as she fades away, and the voice with it, what is left? Body language. A nod of the head.
A look in the eye.
Please, learn to read the look in the eye. She is desperately trying to tell you something, and that something may be urgent. It may be a plea, and if we misread the plea…be assured that we will regret it, and regret it deeply.

I write In Remembrance of Mom to honour my wife, as a tribute to all fellow sufferers, the Alzheimer’s and the care givers. Equally so, I believe, this applies to cancer, ALS, MS, and all debilitating diseases. Look for those wisps.