A Loved One -Tribute to a Caregiver

This is short and sweet.

I have been working with those with early to mid-stage Alzheimer’s recently. I also facilitate caregiver support groups and provide Reiki at memory cafes and memory care communities, so I work with both sides of this disease – PWA (Persons With Alzheimer’s) and Caregivers. Every week I work with and walk caregivers through their challenges, fears, hopes, losses, and griefs. Every week, I give love and support to those with Alzheimer’s, bringing some light and joy to their days. In Alzheimer’s talk the PWA is most often referred to as your loved one.

Yesterday, I met a truly Loved One.

He’s a nice man – very impaired in that he cannot follow anything well at all. It is quite normal to have to direct someone with Alzheimer’s to their chair – to reaffirm where they are going and cue them into their seat, cue them through any activity such as breaking an egg or painting with a paintbrush, or placing something to be glued. Conversations follow disconnected lines of thought with missing nouns. Visual and verbal prompting are standard processes in this world of Alzheimer’s caregiving. Another very important piece is laughter and music. Good memories.

Yesterday I saw a beautiful exchange. A wife came to pick up her husband from an Alzheimer’s program. She bent in low to where he was sitting in the chair and gave him a beautiful welcome kiss on his cheek. Then she hugged him and told him it was time to go home. At that point she amazed me by prompting him to stand up and walking him through putting on his jacket with the most sensitively present, gentle loving prompting – intuitively letting him do what he could, and as soon as he got confused, she effortlessly pinpointed her next prompt more succinctly to what he needed to do until he was jacketed. I just stood back and watched. The whole exchange was graceful and lovely. When jacketed with love, the man then turned to me, shook my hand, said thank you, and proceeded to leave with his awe-inspiring caregiver wife. I felt like sighing. That was one of the lovliest exchanges between caregiver and PWA I have seen.

What made it so? This wife loves her husband like so many other caregivers love their PWA’s, but it is apparent that she has faced the challenges of the disease with love, patience, perseverance, knowledge and probably a lot of support. Through all the loss, robbery, and capriciousness of the disease, she appears to be maintaining her love for and connection with him primary to everything else – not an easy task! Her PWA is truly a Loved One.

We are not all able to be as grounded and centered as this, and certainly not all the time every day, which is the huge challenge of caregiving in Alzheimer’s, but the moment was amazingly beautiful to watch, and made me think; what if we just concentrated a little more on the term Loved One, and kept reminding ourselves of that? Loved One. Beloved, Amazing One. Sacred, Esteemed Human Being. Life on this planet is sacred and beyond precious. May we be empowered to hold our Loved Ones in Love, to welcome them with joy into our days and care for them with might and love, courage and strength, joy and beauty.