grief | jmgoyder

Attraction

by jmgoyder

Attraction is a weird thing because, even though this ‘pull’ is usually to do with the romantic urges of the young, it still has a very powerful influence on the confused emotions of the aged.

Many of the ten women in the dementia house ‘see’ staff and/or other residents as men, possibly because most of us have short hair. So there are often small cries or salutations to ‘Joe’ or ‘Fred’ or ‘Henry’ and we (staff) have to loom close to cover the invisibility of those absent presences. There is no strict rule about how to answer the question of ‘where is Richard?’ but most of us go with the flow and say that he will be back soon.

The doll thing used to give me the horrors because it seemed so totally odd, even patronizing, but I have changed my mind now due to the need many of these beautiful women have – just to hold a baby again.

Attraction: a weird and wonderful experience of opposites, failings, clumsy sentences, beautiful, unusual, extraordinary human beings but mostly a desire to know that interesting person better.

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Jigsawing Parkinsonisms

by jmgoyder

When most people think of Parkinson’s disease, they think of dyskinesia which is the involuntary movements, tremors and tics that are symptomatic of the disease. Anthony’s version (called ‘Parkinsonism’) is not like this. Instead, his disease is characterized by bradykinesia – the chronic slowing down of movement.

Big words to match small, sometimes unnoticeable, symptoms. To begin with, many years ago now, I deliberately tripped over these words and many, many more – like ‘idiopathic’, ‘hypokinesia’, ‘ataxia’, ‘dysphasia’, ‘mirographia’, ‘akinesia’, ‘palilalia’ – just as Anthony was undeliberately tripping, literally, over his own feet. I didn’t want to know what those words meant back then; I didn’t want to know what was coming. The glossary below is for those who are curious:

http://www.webmd.com/parkinsons-disease/parkinsons-glossary

The first signs were subtle like Anthony’s inability to open the vegemite jar, and his reluctance to drive the car. But then the signs became more dramatic: Anthony’s increasing stoop, strange gait, the drooling, getting stuck in the back yard and being unable to walk back to the house, the hallucinations, me coming home from the local shop to find him face-down in the vegetable patch, Silver chain home assistance, hospitalisations, drug experiments, nightly toiletting shifts with Ming, Anthony’s apologies, his gradual loss of control over his body, his shame and frustration….

All of these things jigsawed into each other crookedly, violently sometimes; we could not get the jigsaw back together again no matter how hard we tried, because already there were too many pieces missing. A simpler jigsaw needed to be built and learning what those many big words meant has helped frame the centre of this new jigsaw, the centre being Anthony himself of course, and his incredible resilience and acceptance.

One of the most wonderful things that has happened lately is that just when I thought Ants had become totally immobile, the staff told me that his nephew, P, visited on the weekend and Ants was able to use his walker to go outside into the sunshine with P. This nephew visits Ants every weekend, but he doesn’t do this out of duty, he does it because he loves Anthony (and I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t).

Another wonderful thing is that just when I thought Ants had completely lost his ability to speak coherently, I arrived and rushed to give him a kiss yesterday and he smiled his newfound smile and this was our conversation:

Anthony: You are a wonderful person!
Me: Why?
Anthony: Well, you always find yourself in the most extraordinary places!
Me: What – like here?
Anthony: Yes! You always find me, Jules!

The fact that Anthony’s eloquence, mobility and ability to smile all seem to have come back to some extent, after a long period of struggling with all of these things, is quite strange. I write down all of his extraordinary sentences and am thrilled when he can actually walk; as for the smile, it is almost as if my determination to get that brilliant smile back via any means – including slapstick antics, banter, his favourite comedy series, and just laughing my raucous laugh – has somehow tickled his facial muscles into action again. And, like any exercise of any muscle, the more Anthony smiles, the more able he is to smile. Ming has noticed this and so have the staff and everyone is surprised and delighted.

Does this mean Anthony is getting better? Of course not, but it’s a very interesting turn of events made even more interesting by a conversation I had with a resident whose room is two doors away from Anthony’s. She beckoned me over to where she was sitting in her wheelchair and whispered loudly, “I’ve heard a rumour that Anthony is getting most of the attention these days and is the most popular, but don’t let it bother you because we are all treated well.” Then she guffawed enigmatically and I have yet to decode what she meant.

The other day I told Anthony about Gutsy being killed and he kept reaching out his hand to put it on top of mine.

Over and over and over again – his hand, found underneath the blanket that is always on his knees, and my hand bringing his out into the cold air of a heated room, and his hand finding my hand – a jigsaw of interlaced fingers, a smile, a repeated hand tap.

But, when I was telling Ming about this tonight he said he’d seen Anthony earlier today and Anthony was so confused and blah that he almost didn’t recognise Ming!

Ming: I get it with the smile thing, Mum, but Dad was pretty bad this afternoon.
Me: So should we give up then?
Ming: No!
Me: No?
Ming: I don’t know.
Me: I don’t know either.

The above is not an exact rendition of our conversation but, rather, a compression of many conversations over many months/years. Ming, at 21, is always going to be the vital jigsaw piece that has the elasticity to fit right back in and complete the puzzle, or else wing to and fro.

Par
kins
on
ism
saw
jig

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The loss of Gutsy 9, our pet peahen

by jmgoyder

The evening before last, Ming found Gutsy 9’s body just in front of his shed. He came over to the house to tell me that he wasn’t quite sure that it was Gutsy but he’d taken the body to the woodpile. He had two friends over to stay, so he said they would leave me alone and they retired to his shed.

Once the boys had gone, I did the crying thing, then I took a torch and went out to the woodpile, but I couldn’t find her, so I came back inside and cried some more. I felt bewildered, because, despite the danger of wild foxes, the peafowl have always ranged free because they can fly up and away. Our dogs, too, had become so used to their presence that they would drink from the same water trough.

I will never know what happened that evening, or how it happened, but at dawn yesterday I went over to the woodpile and there she was – her crooked left foot and her white feathers making it easy to identify her body. I picked her up, but couldn’t find where she had been wounded; her eyes were closed and her neck flopped against mine in a last hug.

As a pied peachick (half white, half blue) G9 was rejected by her mother nearly three years ago, so I raised her, and we all loved her. Just the other day, we had some visitors and I picked her up and put her on my lap and she purred her unique hello.

I feel absolutely devastated, but am now beginning to appreciate G9’s fantastic presence in our lives … in retrospect – my beautiful bird.

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My dad’s birthday

by jmgoyder

Today would have been my dad’s 94th birthday if he had lived. He died when my brothers and I were teenagers so he never saw any of our children who nevertheless know him as Granddad. My mother was only 43. Dad was only 57 and died in Intensive Care at the local hospital. He had been admitted having suffered two heart attacks and was recovering when he suffered a third fatal one. The shock and grief of that day is something I will never forget especially as I was on the other side of Australia at the time, in Sydney.

The following portrait was done of a photo taken of Dad a couple of years before he died. We all have the photo and the portrait and my youngest brother even has it tattooed on one of his arms.

Herbert Henry Brinsley Lane, who went by the name of Brinsley but was most often called Brin, was a tall, well-built man who had a presence. He was known for his eloquence and his strong silence, was not particularly gregarious, but very compassionate and generous. His love for my mother is the lens through which I remember my childhood.

He had a Charlie Chaplin way of standing which, as a child, I tried to imitate, and a habit of talking to himself when trying to figure anything out. A strict father, he taught us all manner of manners, especially table manners! But he was a gentle giant.

A radio announcer and high school teacher at Sydney Grammar School, Dad made the extraordinary decision in his early 40s to embark on chiropractic studies and thus began our travels – first to Canada (I was 8) where he completed his chiropractic degree, then to Papua New Guinnea (I was 12) to work as a chiropractor on a mission in the highlands, then to Western Australia (I was 15) where he set up a practice. He was a wonderful chiropractor and if patients couldn’t pay, he would accept milk or apples as payment.

Not long before he died, I was on the phone to him about how much I hated the college I was at in Sydney and, despite being a godly man he told me to come home and to tell the college people to “go to buggery!” Those were his last words to me, unforgettable in the way they still make me laugh, and cry, in that I didn’t make it home in time to see him alive for the last time. At the time of the phone-call, there was no indication that he was ill.

In my writing room, I often look up to my right at the portrait of my father and, underneath, a more recent one done of my mother.

Significantly, Dad approved of Anthony when nobody else did, including Anthony! After all, I was eighteen and Ants was 41. After Dad died, I went back to work for Anthony’s mother, Gar, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I often feel the presence of my dad: when I am having lunch with my mother; at family get-togethers; in the nursing home with Anthony; during moments of hysterical laughter with Ming; during those unexpected moments of intense grief; and when I accidentally speak with my mouth full. Sometimes I imagine that Dad is there/here with me/with us, smiling proudly.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Family Grief Happiness Humour joy LOVE STORY Marriage Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease dementia Western Australia

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So much for the autumn hiatus!

by jmgoyder

Well my autumn hiatus didn’t last long did it! Neither did my ambitiousness haha! I had another look at the full-time behaviour consultant job description and realised that although it seemed a perfect fit for me, there is no way I could do it and keep my job at the nursing home. More importantly, there is no way I could do it and spend enough time with Ants. I did email the association asking if it might be possible to job-share the position but I haven’t heard back yet. There was a public speaking/teaching component to the job but there were also a lot of administrative duties (of people and paperwork and policies) and the latter does not appeal to me in the least! I’m much better at being bossed than being a boss.

So that’s that for the time being – maybe down the track I will do something like that but in the meantime it’s back to writing, including blogging, for me. And I discovered a wonderful program yesterday that will convert your blog into a PDF document and it’s called blog2print. In just an hour or so and for less than $100 I was able to convert 2000 pages of blogging, from 2011 to now, into seven PDF documents inclusive of photos. For more money the program will also convert your blog into a hard cover book, or books, but I didn’t want that because I want to be able to edit and revise and rewrite all those blog entries into a book about our personal experience with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. I had already begun the tedious job of copy/pasting bits into a word document but it was taking forever partly because of having to read the blog backwards and getting confused with dates etc. It wasn’t until I googled “how to turn a blog into a book” that I discovered blog2print and other programs that will do what would take hours and hours manually in just a few clicks – extraordinary!

Anyway this discovery also reminded me of how much blogging has become a part of my life. Not only is the camaraderie between bloggers a fantastic source of joy, but if I hadn’t written all of those posts I never would have remembered the chain of events of the past few years. I guess what I’ll do now is to print it out in 50-page sections and do the hand-written editing in the nursing home with Ants, then come home and finish the job on the computer. That way I can add material retrospectively.

Also, in anticipation of a blog break, I suddenly felt quite bereft! It is such a great way of keeping a record of things that can easily be forgotten – especially conversations both with Anthony, the women in the dementia house, and with the Ming.

For example, he rather reluctantly came to find me at work the other day and I let him into the dementia house and introduced him to the ten women who he proceeded to charm easily, simply because he is a male, and young! Oh I am so relieved not to be going for that behaviour consultant job. I work this afternoon and I can’t wait! I have never felt like this about any other job and I am very much ‘at home’ in my OT role now. Even though none of the women remember me, I am greeted with welcome smiles and the oft-repeated “Oh you look so familiar. Have we met before?”

Anthony doesn’t remember who any of the staff are either and the other day introduced me to one of the carers by saying to her: “Have you met my wife?” She and I exchanged a grin and a ‘yes’; after all, we have known each other now for over three years.

Blogging helps me to remember and record these tidbit gems, these moments of pleasure and humour in amongst the pain of illness and age. And autumn is a good time to write and be because it is too rainy to go for a bike ride, Mr Tootlepedal!

It might also be a good time to convince Ming to get himself some new shoes.

blogging Embarrassing moments Family Friendship Grief Happiness Humour joy LOVE STORY Marriage My published writing Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease dementia Teenagers Western Australia

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Autumn

by jmgoyder

My clouds hug the sky

cockatoos caw out their joy

and the rain giggles.

Just a little haiku to celebrate our autumn. Every evening when I leave the nursing home, I drive past a spot on the edge of town where hundreds of white cockatoos fill the trees like giant snowflakes, and create a raucous cacophony. They are so loud, it can be alarming if you don’t know what the noise is but I love it! I am not quite sure why there are so many in that particular spot as there are none on the farm; there are plenty of other parrots here but not the white ones. Interesting. Well it is finally raining and the brown paddocks will soon be green again! The faltering wormwood will come back to life, the five acres of lawn will need mowing around the house and everything that looked dead will be reborn (okay, except for most of the roses!) The wormwood hedge stretches from where the house is right back to where Ming’s shed is. I remember the days when Anthony trimmed it, then the days when Arthur trimmed it, then the days when Ming said he would trim it, and the days when I thought about trimming it, but, alas, all of those days are gone. Autumn seems a good time to take another blog break so that I can concentrate on some other projects including applying for a job as a behaviour consultant with a local Alzheimer’s Disease organisation. It might happen and it might not but it would be a wonderful opportunity to share some of the lessons I have learned about dementia and communication over the years, including what is happening right now with Anthony and me. It is very hard to see someone who used to be the life of the party reclined crookedly in an armchair in a nursing home. It is also very hard for me to find the words to adequately express how much I love this man, my husband, Anthony, without resorting to cliches. Hence the concluding haiku:

My sky hugs your clouds.

The birds are oblivious.

You hold my small hand.

Animal Australia Birds blogging Family Friendship Grief Happiness Humour joy LOVE STORY Marriage Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease dementia Western Australia Wings

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Going, going … gone!

by jmgoyder

Here are some ‘before and after’ photos of the inside of the two sheds that Dina, her assistant and I cleared the other day:

Shed 1:

Shed 2:

I asked the lovely woman who runs a local heritage park/museum to come out this morning to see if any of the bits and pieces were of interest. She arrived with the man who helps manage the park and they inspected the ‘goods’:

After some mulling and very interesting chats about what some of the once-upon-a-time objects were, the heritage park people picked out a few items of interest for which they were willing to pay, then, with the Ming’s permission (of course!) took most of what you see in the photo away and gave us double the price we would have received from a salvage yard. Brilliant!

At the same time, Dina was here for her last big job with us which was to finish decluttering Ming’s shed/home. Unlike the other day, with the filthy-old-sheds-job, she didn’t have to wear her astronaut costume.

At the conclusion of Dina’s work with Ming today, we chatted over coffee and were all a bit sad that this massive job had more or less come to an end. Now that she’s finished, I feel a bit lost in the ghostly space of things gone, not because I miss the things but because I am going to miss Dina’s regular visits and the euphoria of getting so much done!

One of the most interesting aspects of her service is her summaries and here is an example:

Goyder Services Summary Veranda & Kitchen PDF

I now have several of these summaries that span the two mornings per week, over two months, in which Dina has helped me to move forward. The ‘before and after’ photos in these summaries, and the summaries themselves, are a unique part of her service and a source of joy to me!

Going = rubbish tip (around ten ute/truck-loads now!);

Going = given/sold to interested people/family;

Gone = the feeling of being overwhelmed!

Thank you Dina – ps. Can you help me with the odds and ends left from our work so far?

Animal Australia blogging Embarrassing moments Friendship Grief Happiness Humour joy LOVE STORY Marriage My published writing Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease dementia Teenagers Western Australia Wings

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Wedding anniversary thoughts

by jmgoyder

In a couple of days it will be our 23rd wedding anniversary. Over the years, Anthony and I have been hopeless at remembering this and my mother usually reminds me! But, even after being reminded, Ants and I have never done the whole anniversary present thing, just as we have never bothered with the Valentine’s Day thing.

Our love story, in retrospect, is very romantic but we have both been a bit cringy about public displays of affection and have never adhered to expectations around both occasions. In fact, until now, we have never held hands in public. Perhaps, having hidden our romance for so long, when I was younger, and having had such a wonderful platonic relationship beforehand, our friendship didn’t require the usual trappings of romance.

I think that when a romantic relationship begins with a platonic friendship, it is easier to manage the ups and downs of a marriage. I can remember years ago Anthony suggesting that he might one day buy me an emerald ring and silly, young me hoping to get this on my 40th birthday. Instead, he bought me a wonderful lithograph that he had always wanted!

After Anthony experienced my dignified disappointment (“You just bought me something YOU wanted!”) he began buying me silver bangles every Christmas and birthday, picking them out himself during the years before he became too affected by Parkinson’s disease to drive into town. So he began to send me into town to pick whatever silver bangle I wanted, which I did, reluctantly to begin with and unhappy with the thought that I was romancing myself! I ~~eventually~~ quickly began buying my annual bangles at just above Anthony’s budget instructions. It was hilarious to watch his expression when I came home and said, “I’ve found one and I love it, but it’s a bit expensive!”

Anthony (having always been extremely ~~tight~~ careful with money), would ponder the situation, look at the picture of the bangle, then at my greedy grin, and say, “Yes, okay, Jules.” These were gleeful moments, mischievous and hilarious and as solid as the silver in the bangles.

In light of our current circumstances – Anthony in the nursing home etc. I was tempted to just pretend the whole silver bangle ritual. After all, that’s what I did last Christmas and for my birthday in January. But then tonight I suddenly thought Ants will get a kick out of giving me a new bangle so tomorrow I am going to find one that is really unusual and take it in to get his approval.

Our romance began when I was 23 and now we have been married for 23 years, so I will get the chosen bangle engraved with 23 – yes!

Family Friendship Grief Happiness Humour joy LOVE STORY Marriage Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease dementia

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Dementia dialogues 2

by jmgoyder

My last post raises the question “but how can you listen to someone with dementia who is either incoherent or totally silent?”

There are two particularly talkative women in the dementia house where I work. One of them fluctuates between English and her first language but, regardless of what language she is speaking, her monologues are extremely difficult to understand.

The other woman, who is bedridden now, is so talkative that it is difficult to give her food or drinks because her monologue can be unceasing, but, interestingly, when she loses the thread of what she is saying, she hums a tune. Here is an example:

“And I said to him, said to him, you go go go to the shop and … humming … And there is, is, is a … humming … (takes a mouthful of food) … Oh that’s good, and he said to me that it’s, it’s, it’s a one, two, two, two … humming … What on earth are you do-doing? It’s a very nice dress … humming … chuckling … Oh no, damn … chuckling (takes a mouthful of food) … You shouldn’t, shouldn’t do that … humming … How dare you! I’ll have to, have to do, do, do that … chuckling ….” And on and on this goes.

In my ‘shut up and listen’ mode there are all sorts of nonverbal ways of validating that what these two women are saying is important. I can nod, smile, laugh, hug, hold hands, shake my head and I can pretend to understand. And the ‘shut up and listen’ mode doesn’t mean you can’t say anything at all of course; it just means that you give the person with dementia the floor so to speak. I’ve found recently that one-word responses on my part are much more effective than attempts at coherent conversations. Exclamatory words seem to be particularly successful in eliciting smiles, laughter, pleasure. “Yes!” and “What?” and “Really?” and “Amazing!” and “Thankyou!” and “Please!” – accompanied always with suitable facial expressions – can be a gift to those with dementia who are talkative.

But what about those people for whom speech has become difficult (e.g. Anthony) or even non-existent? This is very difficult because, unless you are psychic, you cannot possibly know what that person might have said/wants to say/feels like saying but can’t. How do you listen to utter silence?

To be continued when I figure that last question out!

Family Friendship Grief Happiness Humour joy LOVE STORY Marriage Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease dementia Wings

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Lost and found 2

by jmgoyder

During one of my shifts in the nursing home the other evening, I was chatting with one of the carers who had come down to the dementia house to help with supper (in order to give the carer I was working with her own supper break). As we made the milos, and cups of tea and served the ten women residents, she chatted about how much she liked Anthony and loved working in his section (high care). She even described situations in which, when he was asking for me, she would quip, “Well I’m your mate too, buddy!” and they would share a bit of banter despite the fact that his retorts are now mostly whispered.

On the days when I am not on duty but simply sitting with Ants in his room, this particular carer will drop in and banter with Ants while I watch, happy and grateful that she, and many of the other carers, domestic staff, kitchen staff and supervisors, like him so much.

I have now told all of the staff to answer his constant question of “where is Jules?” with “Jules will be back soon.” This works quite well in covering the hours I am not there – early morning/late evening – but it probably wouldn’t work if I didn’t spend big portions of the daytime with him.

Anyway, I told this particular carer that he used to be a very loud, laughing, life-of-the-party bloke and she was amazed. I was a bit amazed by her amazement until I realised that of course he now presents as a very quiet, sleepy, incoherent, expressionless old man, diminished by the Parkinson’s.

Now that we are entering the fourth year of Anthony’s time in the nursing home, his physical deterioration is starkly evident however his ability to smile has come back! I am thrilled because for a couple of years there was no smile – not because he was unhappy exactly; it was more to do with his facial muscles not working due to the PD.

Around a year ago I made it my goal to make him smile every single day and I mostly tried this with banter, teasing, tickling, dancing, toilet jokes (sigh), and funny reminiscences. Well, this has worked! And the fact that some of the carers understand/intuit his need for banter, and play the game, is brilliant.

To see this beautiful man’s lost smile come back is the most amazing gift; it takes a bit of conjuring but it always happens and it is like magic to me! When I leave him to come home all of the tears I might have shed are absorbed into a great big grin.

Lost and found: Anthony’s smile.

blogging Family Friendship Grief Happiness Humour joy LOVE STORY Marriage Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease dementia

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jmgoyder

wings and things

Attraction

Jigsawing Parkinsonisms

The loss of Gutsy 9, our pet peahen

My dad’s birthday

So much for the autumn hiatus!

Autumn

Going, going … gone!

Wedding anniversary thoughts

Dementia dialogues 2

Lost and found 2

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