The greatest gift of writing this blog is reading it back to Mitzi. She generally takes about an hour and a half to finish her meal, so I sit with her and read her these posts and your sweet comments and she always gets “good teary” and takes my hand or pats it while listening.
Alzheimer’s Disease can do incredibly awful things to people. In my experiences with it, I’ve seen generally gentle giants try to strangle caregivers over helping them to put on shoes. I’ve seen pillars of the faith cuss out their family members. But I’ve also seen dementia tame the sharpest of tongues, and melt the hardest of hearts. The filters that we all have so carefully resurrected in life to shield the world from who we think we are break down with dementia. It’s almost fascinating to watch how it can affect a person. I so value my time with Mitzi because she is only able to be who she is these days now that any walls are falling away. I enjoy listening to her observations and hearing her opinions about the important things in life. Her genuine love for people is what shines through everything she says and does. She has told me in the past that she has had a lot of time to think about what really matters and it has made her appreciate relationships so much more than she already did.
Sometimes I wish we could all operate on a level of authenticity like that…????
