Visits with my 101 year old Aunt
Well…………., technically she’s my father’s Aunt. My grandmother’s sister - not that it matters to her, cos I’m pretty sure most visits she has no idea who I am. What she does know, I’m confident, is that I love her.
See the thing I’ve noticed, though I have zero research to support it (but it must be true, cos it’s online, on this blog) is the less people can use their mind, the more people can feel. Maybe it’s like how Dare Devil lost his sight and has an enhanced sense of hearing. If his super power is the gifts he worked to attain, due to his blindness, then maybe dementia’s superpower is the gift of feeling.
It is a case study of two. I first noticed it with my Nana, her sister.
Nana had Alzheimer’s for most of the last decade of her life. It was a challenge for her caregiver in the early years, but once she was hospitalised and most of her memories had faded away, all that remained was her ability to feel. With her giant heart.
It soaked up any love that came her way, which was a lot, because all the love she shared in her life came back to her two-fold and she shared a lot of love in her life. A lot. (Not in a dodgy way in a sweet old lady, Nana way).
Maybe it’s cos they’re sisters, maybe it’s because they’re beautiful humans, or maybe it’s just what happens when we strip away all the thinking and we’re left with all the feeling.
It never feels hard to drive a 2-hour round trip to find her sleeping. I have little expectation for conversation. It never feels hard to hear the same story 3 times or 5 times. I have little expectation for clarity. Occasionally it feels hard to hear her say people leave her because she’s selfish or bossy. She was bossy, but the people she remembers, like my Nana, have left because she outlived them. I have little expectation she’ll remember that in an hour.
I go, because at this moment I have the time, because I love her and because my Nana tells me to. There’s a surprising peace in spending time with someone without any expectation, visiting my Aunt has only one. Nana died more than a decade ago, but deep in my heart, I ‘feel’, she expects, me, to communicate the love she has for her beloved sister. I know from when I used to visit Nana. I saw the joy it brought her to hold my hand. Without any understanding of who I was, somehow, she knew I loved her.
So even though I know my Aunt doesn’t remember me (to be fair, she doesn’t remember yesterday either and thinks a colour photo of her son, is her late father), I do know she feels my love when I’m there. And sometimes, just occasionally, she’ll tell me a story about her sister, my Nana, in her youth.
And it’s even better the third time!
