After an already full day of friends and family yesterday, Mitzi joined us on a fun adventure to a big cat rescue just outside of town. We were on the hunt to find a Liger (which she and I kept laughing about from the movie Napoleon Dynamite), but we never found one, unfortunately.
In our big tour group was a family that had a young woman with them who had some pretty significant special needs. I loved watching them with her because she would get audibly excited about things and they’d just let her be her, not try to quiet her down or anything (and hey, it’s hard to not be excited when Siberian Tigers are chomping down on a whole chicken…pretty intense stuff!). She would walk sometimes and they would help her, and when she needed to sit in her wheelchair, she’d sit and they would push her.
At one point, I was looking over at an animal, but the girl was in the same field of vision, so my youngest son (who was standing with Mitzi) pulled on my hand and whispered to me, “Hey Mom, don’t stare at her. She can’t help it. She just likes being here with everyone.” I truly wasn’t staring at her, but I wanted to reinforce the truth of what my little guy’s heart had picked up on, so I knodded and moved on to look at something else.
I stood there last night, and have contemplated it all day today, that the more our friends, family, and loved ones with Alzheimer’s get to go out and feel empowered to just be who they are, the better they feel about themselves, and the greater the awareness and sensitivity is for this disease. Andy was right, people (of all abilities) do like to just be out around people. I help Mitzi do a lot of things that sometimes garner us raised eyebrows or even frowns in public. That’s a “perk” of having Alzheimer’s at 57…she doesn’t look like there is anything usual about her. So I know people make judgments that they wouldn’t make if she was 87 and I was helping her do the same things. Like I always say, you cannot fit Alzheimer’s in a box, and I’m grateful for the opportunities Mitzi and I have to raise awareness and help people get more comfortable with the disease…❤️
