STEPPING OUT SIDE THE BOX

While stepping in among the perils and minefields of caring for a loved one, I have long learned that it is nearly impossible to try to take a loved one out of their box and make them climb into mine.
 Oh, it may start out as being successful! The tragedy is that as ones world is shrinking mine has/is expanding.
As something is grasped today, that something may be eluded tomorrow. Preferences escape.  Empty boxes of cereal placed in random places waiting to be transported to the recycling bin.
It is a recipe for a volatile relationship, especially if caring for ones own loved ones.
We all want to keep our private domain and maintain our own little corner of paradise.   I believe that concept is one of the reasons we may turn down the help we so desperately need.
While our concerns mount, we try to pocket the odd remarks here and there, something forgotten that should have been remembered, confusion of plans or entries on the calendar when they have changed, or losing the car in a parking structure. We want to chalk it up to approaching THAT senior age.
The tendency is to bat away clue after clue that something is happening. 

My first encounters with the cognitive and memory test several years ago while care giving,  can give an indication of what may be going on, however, with some there may be no obvious sign of cognitive impairment at present to outsiders.

MY LADY -2010-Better is a one day in God's court.

I have an over-developed sense of the melodramatic at least on the inside and as time progresses it becomes apparent that behavior alters, subtly at first, and then more obviously.  All the endearing qualities that you enjoyed slowly disappear and confusion sets in and becomes more evident.
One redeeming quality of this disease is that it appears to protect the loved one from understanding just what is happening.
Many times, I resent the fact that I have to make so may decisions.
Then there are the obsessions brought on by dementia, whether it be with tissues or the latest collapse of personal hygiene.  Their movement becomes slower and thinking is more ponderous or more frequent visits to the bathroom, every ten minutes.  Fighting with the night clothes and midnight romps down a hallway.  Digestive systems taking full revenge.  Eating slows down.
Their world continues to shrink as mine says "stay in their BOX!"  They appear to be the happiest, and most content in their ignorance when you join them in their BOX.

A tightening settles across my chest whenever I find myself trying to cope with the latest events, the latest incidents.  My lungs feel an enormous weight, my heart and breath quicken. The emotional strain is sometimes inconceivable.

CO-LOVED ONES

  It is inevitable and evident when I make most of the decisions that
these are stressful,  emotional, yet thoroughly wonderful days, usually a build up of trivial things anything that threatens, comes crashing down.  Plans go out the window often.

I live/lived in a mixed fiction and reality world, one in the box and the next dreaming of running away.  I try to sort the fiction and reality and try to sort out exactly what transpired when I am not present and a loved one is trying to explain some concerns, a mixture of past and present.

The images remain strong as I marvel at how beautiful my last respite was.  Yes, manage to get out of their box and back into yours periodically, only move your box around or get a bigger one and keep it open or discard it.
"Don't be killed on the inside with memories." with what was and never will be again.

MY LOVED ONE -At 95 (June 2017) Living with us

Don't feel guilty if you don't get out more.
If your loved one places something in odd places or scatters tissue fragments do not scold or correct.  Short term memory allows no allowance for walkers,false teeth, or canes to be left in odd places.

"Dementia alters behavior in all sorts of dramatic and distressing ways, but sometimes its the little pleasures that are gone that hurt the most."  (Excerpt from a book, I recently read.)
When THINGS start to happen there is often the misunderstanding that a moment of forgetfulness is just loosing a few loose screws when in reality it may be the beginning of the early stages of an unpleasant journey.

That journey may just begin with the surrendering ahead of time of the losses ahead.

The comfort we have is that God is in the BOX with us.
 

EXTEMPORANEOUS

This is going to be one of those blogs that is Extemporaneous.  I have never done this before.     This is my first.

It has been awhile since I have blogged not because I have not had the time but my mind has had one of big pool of assorted topics to think on and a swirl of the past and the present and a combo of both.  It’s been hard corralling those thoughts into somewhat of a cohesive piece of work.  Grandma Frogger is on vacation to the Bayou.
As I write, I am listening to Jambalaya with the Carpenters.
When I was in high school, they were really popular with the “in crowd”.  However, I was not with the “in crowd”.
I hung out with three sisters from a very conservative musical family from church who  considered the Carpenters anathema.  However being the naughty girls that we were at times, we would sneak times to listen to someones record, probably over to my place where I lived with an uncle & aunt who were not so tight on music.
I had one of those record players that looked like a little suitcase with the little round thingies to make the 33 and 45 rpm work with the spindle.
Jambalaya is one of those songs with a very catchy tune and can stay in your mind for the rest of the day. 
“Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gayo,” is hardly lyrics I want to meditate on for the rest of the day, however, there are times, I get into somewhat of a wild, reckless mood.

  How do you explain to the grandkids what “gayo” meant then and that in my early days it meant to be happy and joyful.  How far our world is today from mine to the grandkids.

I am also bemused by my husbands recollection of one of his memories as he got into trouble with his parents for accompanying a friends family to the movies to watch Pinocchio without his parents approval.
Going to the movies just wasn’t a good thing for a good conservative Baptist and a CM&A er’s.

The first 13 yrs. of my life were pretty much devoid of most media.  TV was a novelty and I do not recall members of my family having one either until years later in black and white.
We have come a long way from those days.  TV went off the air at ten and there were only a few channels.

My first visit to the movie theater was in around 1974 (I was in my 20’s) to watch The Sound Of Music somewhere in Pasadena.  The feeling and awe was surreal.  I had never before been in a movie theater.  The first feeling was as if I had stepped into Satan’s territory and yet the anticipation of participating in something that may not be approved by God.  I did not know what to expect.  I felt like somewhere along during the time sitting watching that I would somehow be transported into another world which I was. 
 I was captured into that world for the time I was there totally unaware of those around me and my first date with my husband to be.  I was a little startled by the loudness and wondered who was hard of hearing.  It was an unforgettable moment.
I could probably count on my one hand the many times I have gone to the movies.  I just could not justify spending the little money that God allowed me to have in those and subsequent days.
 Upon finding out that those movies were available after a time to rent,borrow, or buy at a cheaper rate and could watch over and over again, I could not see the point of going to the theater and paying for a husband to fall asleep anytime during the movie.
What it all boils down to is that I never got into the watch part of TV or movies and to this day could not carry on a conversation about the latest or oldest movie.

I must confess though that I was curious to watch Iron Man 3 that my son-in-law had helped produce simply because he had spent so much time on that movie.
In fact, my husband and I shared ear buds and watched it on one of our train travels back from the Pacific Northwest one year.  I was pleasantly surprised as I was expecting perhaps something else.
I could watch Anne of Green Gables many, many times and still be entertained by Anne with an e’s voluminous verbosity and vocabulary.
When I am old and in a “nursing home” just sit me in front of the Anne Of Green Gables series.  Ha,Ha.

Not to long ago, as I was blogging about my in laws that I never knew but only from my husband and writings I found in “THE BOX” they mentioned watching The Bells Of Saint Mary in 1947 or 1948 on their honeymoon.  I was curious, watched it on my computer and found it very enjoyable even though in black and white and filmed so long ago.

I remember when we were first married, had moved into our 1949 house in North Hollywood.  We did not have a TV for our first 3 yrs.  One day my husband brought an old used, black and white, turned it on and the quietness and silence that I had so treasured was broken.  It forever transformed our lives.  For me the sound seemed deafening even on mute.  I had trouble concentrating and focusing on more mindful pursuits.
I am sure, that along this last half of my life I have watched other movies and videos, however, reading books and blogging is my passion during this season of my life.

I find that spending time in front of the TV or watching videos fosters a mindset of spending less time with God and in His Word.