From the very moment I met her wife, I knew that Susan was spectacularly loved! Known for her playful spirit, tenacity on the golf course, witty sense of humor, passion for University of Oklahoma and deep love of adventure and spontaneity, Susan and I became fast friends.
She regaled me with her stories of epic summers of her youth and adulthood spent in her most favorite place, Great Pond in Belgrade Lakes, ME. The large extended Foster family had several cottages on Foster's Point where they all happily gathered each summer.
She and her cousins spent countless hours plunging into the lake for a swim, swiping handfuls of Maine blueberries, donning silly costumes to make each other laugh and feeling the spectacular magic of summers on the lake. The memories they forged would be forever ingrained into Susan's essence.
Dementia is known for the losses it creates; loss of short term memory, loss of the ability to perform familiar tasks, loss of language, loss of comprehension, loss of judgment, loss of orientation, loss of attention, loss of interest and the heartbreaking list goes on and on and on. Maybe it's time to change this tragedy narrative of dementia and see things in a different light.
One hallmark of dementia is the loss (sorry one more) of one's "social filter". That powerful social construct that tells us what we should and shouldn't do or say or act. This can be such a liberating event! What could you experience without these barriers... joy, wonder, creativity, true self expression, the ability to fly?!
While I do not intend to diminish the pain and suffering that comes with dementia, I intend to highlight one of its strengths. Without these burdensome rules for "adulting", I believe that Dementia can also reveal one's deepest, truest, purest self and a closer connection to joy.
For Susan, I believe her life essence continued to be celebrated through a handful of blueberries and a dip in the lake. I am so blessed that Susan taught me these things earlier in her dementia journey, so that I might honor her with this deep knowing in the later days.
On a bright summer day that I will never forget, I had the honor of rolling Susan's wheelchair into the depths of Cherry Creek Reservoir so that she might experience the cool lake water lapping at her feet once again. I continued to regularly slip her handfuls of fresh blueberries at breakfast and watch for that sparkle in her eye. Eventually the day came that that sparkle never showed itself and she finished her journey a few weeks later surrounded by the people who adored and celebrated her most. Thank you Susan, for the honor of sharing your essence with me and to your family for the honor of sharing you with all of us.
Sit with me here.
Sit with me and we will write memories in a language
only we can understand.
Wishes and dreams will
decorate the
conversation carried in the
whisper of trees
and ripples of
the water.
Only the wood will know of stolen glances,
of reckless laughter
and of intertwined hands.
So I demand,
rather than ask.
Sit with me here.
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