“Stories are our primary tools of learning and teaching, the repositories of our love and legends. They bring order into our confusing world.”
~ Edward Miller, British Historian
How ‘bout letting one of the stories below be your wingman?
It might be just what you need to “prime the pump” to get hearts and minds engaged, but with other people as the main characters!
We hope one or all of these stories lead to meaningful conversations with friends, family, neighbors, co-workers…and your medical care support team. Let’s keep the “die-a-logue” alive!
Calling the Birds Home
My mother and I have lived side by side on the same farm for decades. Our love was mutual and constant. In 2015 my mother developed vascular dementia, and with that began the loss of her emotions and her memory and the relationship of mother and daughter as we have known it for nearly 60 years.
My name is Cheryl St. Onge. I was born in Worcester, Massachusetts the only child of a Physics professor and a painter. I guess I take after the painter (my mother) and chose a creative path. I’m a photographer. Pictures are my words.
Forever is Way Too Long
I've wanted to write about Suzanne almost every day that I've woken up since December 14th. I can't even bring myself to use a euphemism. I can't quiet my head and allow myself to face the truth. And then I tell myself, no one actually knows the truth. No one knows what happens once you're gone from this dimension. She could still be here in someway. Right?
!And so I've avoided writing about Suzanne, because this all sounds incredibly personal and painful and really should I be sharing this here?; well, I finally realized I can barely show up here without doing it. I want to talk about Suzanne, I want her name said once a day, I want to think of her and be able to bring her up, something she said or did or a memory of something that happened, I just want her remembered, talked about. But more than anything, I want to talk with her.
It's the forever-ness of it all that makes my heart constrict. That makes me never want things to be totally quiet anymore. There's a movie going. Or there's music. Or both. And yet I crave it, I think about it, I wish I could quiet things down... but that's too quiet, there's too much room there to have reality set in.
I had planned on growing old with Suzanne. I could see it with clear vision. It involved family, laughter, wrinkles, grey or still dyed hair (we were forever dying our hair) and a park bench, or a porch, somewhere in Brooklyn, because we had finally accepted what we'd all resisted for years, and RK and I eventually retired there. We're telling stories to make the other one gasp! One of us is smoking, most likely. We get a phone call from my sister, K., saying she's coming to visit...
The forever part feels crazymaking.
Letters to Remember
A year before my father died, shortly before I was to return to England, where I was living in my 20's, he and I sat on my parents' deck in Marion, Massachusetts, overlooking the harbor bathed in a late summer light. There, my dad, looking remarkably well for someone whose prostate cancer had metastasized into his bones, told me everything a child wants to hear from their parent—that he loved me and was proud of me. These were things I knew, but had never heard him say so directly, with such deliberateness. A few months later a letter arrived to me in England in which he expanded on his feelings about me. And though I would see him again, it proved to be his goodbye.
Dave & Annie’s Story
I was once asked to facilitate a conversation with Annie and her husband, Dave. Dave was suffering moderate dementia and was on a downward trajectory. He had written advance directives years earlier, and Annie wanted to try to ascertain if he felt the same now as when he had completed the papers. Previously, he had stated he did not want artificial prolongation of life. He was able to confirm this decision when we talked.
Last Breath
She took her last breath on June 7, 2017. I honestly don’t remember when. Time was either standing still or careening past, I can’t exactly recall which. I thought I’d never forget that time, but here I am almost seven years later and I can’t put my finger on it. Pretty sure it was around 4am.