November 30, 2014 - 14:23
Donna Caires
Final Post Adult and Aging 11/30/14
I was most struck by the power of the telling as described by Anna. So much inferred by her innocent narration. I was confronted by the memories of the realities of my fathers decline and how it affected us by the slow and menacing creep of the illness descending onto all of our lives; unrelenting, barely noticeable at first, but irreversible like the crushing plight of anything which can’t get out of the path of its massive weight. A glacier destined on its course. That’s how helpless it feels to lose someone who has been diagnosed with a brain wasting disease as dementia or Alzheimer’s. You wait a long time for each noticeable drop in memory function, and hence, loss of self, and yet you have no other alternative but to stay in solidarity and wait with the patient until the disease takes it’s last bite. As the person you love loses their memory of everything including of you, paradoxically, your identity is lost as well, because our sense of self is often anchored in the memories and realities of others and especially our primary attachments like parents.
I was most touched by the theme around the multiple brave attempts to keep moving and keep searching for that sense of home, that perfect home we may all be looking for in our psyches. I become quickly overwhelmed with emotion when considering the tenacity of the human spirit which bravely persists in the face of our inescapable finality. Where we find meaning, art and beauty at the intersection of loss and horror. So bittersweet, so inspirational, one can’t help but marvel at our sweet vulnerabilities we collectively share, and who could not respond with love for every part of what it weak and strong and exalted in us and care?