Columnist Bill Herr taught high school mathematics and science for 32 years before serving as a volunteer and then as a staff chaplain at two nursing homes.
By Bill Herr
When a person develops dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), some of the wiring in the brain gets out of alignment. The result is difficulty verbalizing, having memory issues and possibly posing behavioral changes. It is believed that everything we ever learned or experienced in our lives is recorded somewhere in our brain.
Have you ever had trouble recalling someone’s name and later the name pops into your mind? That is what happens sometimes with persons with dementia. At certain random times, the wires in their head relating to memory align and they remember. Following are three examples of this that I witnessed.
May was a former music teacher. She had played violin in a community orchestra. At the nursing home she was pleasantly confused with dementia. She often took a rag and wiped dust off furniture, sometimes getting on her knees. She had a nice smile and rarely spoke. She was liked at MMH and her daughter was a wonderful caregiver, coming to visit her mother nearly every day. May never expressed recognition of her daughter.
After spending time with her mother one day, she said, “Mother, I have to go now. I love you. Goodbye.” The daughter was nearing the end of the hall when May said her daughter’s name followed by the words, “I love you, too.” The nurse overheard her and told an aide, “Go bring her daughter back.” There was joy in the daughter’s eyes when she was told what May had said.
Jim was a resident who once had his own construction business. He had built a church in the small town where he lived because he felt there was a need for one. His wife told me that he had given some messages in that church until a regular pastor was hired.
When he came to be a resident at the nursing home, he was very quiet, said little and was in a stage of dementia. We all sensed that he was a special person, he had a presence. He was well liked by members of the staff. One day he was sitting alone at a table in the dining room. He was staring ahead as he often did. He seldom made eye contact. I walked up beside him and said, “This is the day the Lord has made” and I stopped talking. He immediately said, “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” I knew then that his faith was intact when he correctly finished Psalm 118:24.
Mary couldn’t verbalize at all when she came to the nursing home. She would sit in her reclining wheelchair and rock back and forth. She was watched carefully so she would not go over backwards.
At chapel service, she would be placed with the back of her wheelchair close to the wall. She didn’t make eye contact, but she had a presence about her. I can’t explain it except that she seemed to have a silent awareness. One day she was sitting in her chair, and I knelt in front of her and said, “Mary, isn’t it wonderful that God loves us so much that he wants us to live with him in heaven after we leave this earthly life?” She looked at me and gave a firm “yes” nod several times. I’ll never forget that moment. There was no doubt she understood what I had said.
The point is that when family members or friends come to a nursing home to visit a resident that may have dementia or AD, they should be patient and observant of their friend or loved one. Even if there is no response or sign of recognition, God places love in each of our hearts when we're born, and it may burst out of the darkness of those with dementia at any time.
A devotional writer said that every morning when we wake up, God has filled our heart with love. Like a full cup of coffee that spills some when we are bumped, God wants us to spill some of that love to others.
That is why visitors to nursing home residents are my heroes. They spill love to those that need it.
