Showing posts with label Alzheimer's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alzheimer's. Show all posts

Friday, February 6, 2015

Betty, Betty...This Week's Wikem Word:Zoetrope





 this week's wikem explores the words Zoetrope

As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures... wikipedia

His trembling hand reaches to touch her
But loses her
In the flicker of years
Like shadows on a tree-lined lane-way
She is there,
Then disappears

He opens his mouth to tell her
How lovely
Are her lips
Then stares,
Who is this stranger
Beneath his fingertips?

He calls to her
Betty, Betty,
She answers,
Soft and kind
But he seems to be looking
For someone he cannot find

© Janet Martin

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Alzheimers





The years have whittled away
More than memories
Her plumpness reduced to skin and bones
Beneath a cotton sheet
Where she is babied and mothered
While she traces the air
Looking for a lifetime of Something
She lost somewhere

© Janet Martin

My daughter Emily is overcome with pity and love  for the people she cares for at a long-term care facility.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Angels Among Us (a re-post)

 
 This is our 'favorite Aunt Salome'. Because she was born with Down's Syndrome she grew up over and over with all her nieces and nephews. She is 57 and in the advanced stages of Alzheimer. She doesn't know, for the most part who anyone is, but in sudden clear moments flickers of her former, jolly self return. Oh, we love you, Salome.)


They should have shelves,
no, monumental showcases 
burgeoning with trophies and medals
in honor of their services and heroism.
Instead, they are quite obscure,
sorting through heads of cauliflower
or bunches of bananas at the super-market.
They hunch beneath umbrellas,
disappearing through ordinary doorways
to invisible mission-fields.
Who are they?
They are the care-givers
of beautiful special-needs souls
placed into life with afflictions devoid of explanation,
simply need;
the basic, never-ending needs requiring faithful hands
to bathe, feed, teach,
lift, hug, pamper
and clean countless messes.
They are the voices talking,
soothing, praising, singing,
weeping and praying.

They remain,
driven by a law beyond human reasoning
and strengthened by a force beyond human understanding;
Love.
No glory or applause waits for them
at the end of their day,
simply weariness and the promise
that as long as life continues so will need.
And thus they quietly continue,
never seeking adulation
but diligently seeking
hope, patience, strength;
planting joy in gardens
witnessed by God alone.

Beneath their touch broken flowers bloom.
Faithfulness will be their legacy.
Heartache hones their beauty,
astonishing in its rare form
of work-worn hands and tear-tender eyes.

There will never be a hall of fame
for those who teach an autistic child to say mama.
There are no grand-stands
filled with cheering fans
as strong arms steady weak, trembling bodies
endeavoring to take a first step.
There are no banners waving in celebration
because Peter finished a whole serving of applesauce
or Mary learned to read her printed name.
But there are crowns of glory held in waiting,
unfathomable
in the richness of their reward.

Someday God will reach down,
lift these angels from earth
and restore them to Heaven.
‘Well done’, He will declare,
‘you have completed your mission.
You have taught my precious servant-child
to trust fully in me.
Because of you they will receive many rewards
and will hear these blessed words,
‘well done my good and faithful servant.
Enter into the rest prepared for you’

Yes, there truly are angels among us,
teaching God’s children how to love
and leading them ever closer to Him.

Dedicated to all the angels with afflictions too countless to number, and of course, to their beautiful, angels-in-waiting caregivers.

Janet Martin

Due to increased care she needed to be moved to long-term care facility.
 Today I dropped in to see her,
 I held her...and wept.
She stared at me
long and hard,
then she slept.


Tuesday, May 29, 2012

When things return to 'Normal'...

Mom giving Salome one of her favorite drinks...Ginger-ale. She cannot talk but her body language and gulping say it all!

‘Normal’ does not hover in tomorrow
Nor does it reside in the past
It is not a sweet, coveted hour
Waiting in regions dim and vast

‘Normal’ is not a state or condition
It carries no guarantee
It does not linger on pining or wishing
When this day is history

But ‘normal’ is the bloom we are holding
The moment that meets our gaze
For even now this ‘normal’ is folding
Into planted yesterdays

Who knows the nature of tomorrow’s ‘normal’?
Will its filament be leaden or gold?
And will we wish as we reminisce
For the ‘normal’ that now we hold?

© Janet Martin

How often do we find ourselves thinking 'when things return to normal'?  The other day I used this line when I was talking to my mother...When they brought dear Aunt Salome (in above photo) to their home- the Dr. said it was  'so she could spend her last days with loved ones in a non-hospital environment'. That happened almost four years ago. Salome is thriving beneath tender, loving care in spite of  Down's Syndrome, advanced Alzheimer's and complete physical inability; the DR. says her heart is strong. Salome turns 57 in a few weeks. I mentioned to Mom that 'someday when things return to 'normal', and she asked me to read the quote on her fridge. Its a reminder that 'the 'normals in life are now, for we cannot know what tomorrow's normals may be'. I have been thinking a lot about that...

Salome and her care-giver's are the inspiration in this article...Angels Among Us


Thursday, February 2, 2012

The Heartless Thief; Alzheimers

Teardrops well
In her pale, blue eyes
She was going to tell
Us stories
Of when she was a girl
And a youthful sparkle returns
From a tender world
As she recalls that day
For a brief, splendid moment
Before it slips away
And she grasps vainly
For memories; Fading,
behind her eyes…
…little bits of colored ribbon
Floating to the skies

Janet~