Tower to Trenches
It is Sunday, March 15, and my husband and I are entering the Caroline Kline-Galland Nursing Home, having arrived at our usual 11:25 a.m. time. The front foyer is quiet, absent the usual residents who sit there to watch some small piece of the world go by. We see, as always, framed notices of residents who have died recently, and we hear the sound of recorded music coming from a nearby activity hall. Having signed in and put on our visitors’ tags—coded to allow us entrance to the protected area of the second floor--we make our way to 2B East, where my Aunt Ruth lives. With us is my second cousin Julie, who is in Seattle for a convention.
I have been anticipating this visit for weeks. I know I hold fantasies. I know I am hoping that Ruth will recognize Julie, that there will be a spark. I also know this is unlikely, that in the past month Ruth has barely recognized me (and my husband even less so), despite knowing us without hesitation during two years of visits. The persistent decline has been adding up of late (we keep saying, “How can she decline all the time and still be alive?), so yes, I know I am crazy for expecting her to recognize someone she hasn’t seen since 2001.
But this someone is Julie, who grew up in Kingston, NY and visited Ruth often with her mother. This is the daughter of Ruth’s first cousin Marcia, who in childhood lived just two doors away on Hone Street. Ruth and Marcia were lifetime best friends, “joined at the hip” by everyone’s account, living near each other for much of their life and then connected by daily phone calls thereafter. Marcia’s was the voice Ruth heard in the last phone conversation she ever had. It is this woman’s daughter who has come to visit, now age 55 and maybe looking enough like her mother to open a space in Ruth’s mind. Maybe Ruth will think it is Marcia. Marcia died last year, but the one possible advantage of dementia is that death is not a barrier to a visit.
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As we walk down the corridor to the lunchroom, an aide says to us, “She’s ready for you. She looks really nice.” Then here is Ruth being wheeled out, looking remarkably good in a white sweater and a recent haircut. All I really hoped for was a shirt not stained with lunch, but the nurses have worked a small miracle to make her look fresh for the special visitor we said was coming.
I start as we always start, saying hello, reminding her who I am, searching for the look that tells me she has clicked in and knows me, waiting for the “just like Ruth” comment that lets us know she is there. What I get is weak eye contact and the start of jargon, but we can do nothing but proceed. We have only this one day for the visit.
We are all disappointed at first. Ruth looks at Julie as we introduce her but then looks back to me. We say, “O.k., let’s keep trying.” Over and over we introduce Julie; over and over Julie looks into Ruth’s eyes and says, “Hi Ruthie, it’s Julie. I’m so happy to see you.” Over and over Ruth keeps looking back at me. In the reverse of the experiments where babies look at novel stimuli longer than familiar ones, Ruth keeps returning to my familiar face.
We stick with the visit longer than usual, moving to the front room when Ruth gets restless. We start all over again and say, “Ruth, look who’s here!” We show her pictures of Julie and Marcia, and pictures of old-time Kingston—the family’s grocery stores and the Hone Street house. I move away and Julie sits with Ruth, holding her hand, reminiscing about Kingston.
There is no one moment of drama, but little by little, Ruth gives us fragments that we piece together into the performance we are hoping for. She begins looking right at Julie. In the midst of incoherent language she says, “Have you heard from Marcia?” In the midst of random utterances she speaks of Aunt Bessie, who lived in Kingston all her life. In the midst of a rambling conversation punctuated by Julie’s loving comments she says, “I’m so glad you came to see me.” And at the end, as we begin to talk of leaving, she says, with the intonation and dry manner every family member would recognize, “Next time call before you come.”
Afterwards, in the car, we are jurors reviewing the evidence, repeating her words to ourselves, the phrases that leapt out of the jumble. We take a vote: Do you believe she knew someone from Kingston was there, someone different, someone important? My husband, the skeptic, puts in the final vote: “I don’t think there’s any question but that she did,” he says. The verdict is in.
I wanted us all to believe, and we did.
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So what is truth? What is fantasy? How do we make sense of this space in one’s life where dementia takes you from reality but does not cut the final cord? What is truth when you reach across to this person, grasping, trying to find her in the cloudy sea in which she resides?
What did I really hope for out of Julie’s visit? I hoped that Julie would be a comfort to Ruth, a way to let her know that the family still remembered her and missed her. I wanted Ruth to feel that Kingston was there, awaiting her final return; that her roots were still strong, however tenuous her memories. And in writing this, I realize I wanted to know all this as a comfort to me. I wanted the visit to comfort me.
I am the last link to family Ruth will have, and despite my best efforts to keep her connected to all the relatives, who stretch from New York through Tennessee to Florida, I feel the link weakened with her diminishing mind. Some days I find it hard to hold all the memories, to be the sole family left alongside her fading life. So many people still cherish her and miss her (several 90-year-old cousins call routinely to check on her!)—but only I am here with her, trying to convey this love and memory, wondering what if anything gets through to her mind and heart.
So what I really wanted out of Julie’s visit was to have one day where someone from Kingston—the touchstone of Ruth’s life and the core of her narrative—would sit with Ruth and me, and we would all remember together and all be witness to the passage of time. I wanted a day where I would not have to do this alone. As I conclude this writing, I realize there is no question but that I got what I wished for.
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Postscript: You’ll note that I talk about feeling alone with Ruth despite my husband’s presence. He is, in fact, a constant and wonderful support, and he joins me in the visits to Ruth. But he does not share this part of the family history, and he has a different experience of the visits. We should remember as we work with families that feelings of being alone or burdened do not have to be tested against a literal reality.
