I've learned that the heart of us is not the body but the mind. I've also learned that the mind of us can sometimes become trapped inside itself. Sometimes it comes back out one day, like mine did, but sometimes the mind stays inside itself until there's nothing left.
I was genuinely touched when St. Catherine's Village announced that their new memory care unit would be named for my father. Sometimes I feel like St. Dominics and St. Catherine's are my half-siblings because my father spent so much time trying to develop them. I didn't really know what Alzheimer's was then. I hadn't known anyone who had it yet, but that would change. I didn't know how many people who I knew to be brilliant before their lives at St. Catherine's and become residents of Campbell Cove. I didn't know how many people I loved would eventually have their own mind betray them and leave them, and ultimately take life away from them.
On the hall where I'm rehabilitating my stubborn leg, a woman came today to lead the residents in Christmas carols. This is the seventh time this year someone has tried to lead me in Christmas carols, so I snuck out. Sometimes being here makes me very sad. None of these people deserve what's happening to them. For the most part, they make the best of it and rarely complain. It's hard for me, though, because some of them I knew when they were strong and brilliant and holding up the pillars of Mississippi, healing patients, creating and practicing laws, building businesses, and more. On the walls is the art of women who I knew to be brilliant and formidable and who spent their last breaths here.
When it was over, I made an appearance to pretend like I'd been there all along. I don't think anyone was fooled. I heard the woman who led the activity speaking to someone else about how she was organizing some residents over at Campbell Cove for their Christmas performance, and her lead singer was a woman with extensive operatic training who was set to do three solos but couldn't because she's lost her glasses.
There's something in the way she said it that sounded very familiar to me. There are only so many people in Jackson with extensive operatic training who would be a candidate for a memory-care unit.
"What's her name?" I asked. "The woman who lost her glasses?"
I can't give you the names of other residents here, but it was the woman I was thinking it must be. Her husband was my dear friend and someone I had a great deal in common with. We shared a love of the arts, of our fraternity, and we both had familial connections to a foundational utility company in Mississippi. His wife shared these interests and more, and together they spent their lives trying to elevate the cultural opportunities in Jackson and Mississippi.
I wasn't aware that she was in need of the kind of help a memory care unit provided. She was, when I knew her, a uniquely brilliant person. Learning this, I felt a breath of melancholy flow over me. "At least her music is still with her." I thought.
"I use simple magnification glasses when I read. They're very cheap, so I buy them in quantity because I lose them too. Do you think this would help your friend when she sings?" I asked and returned to my room to fetch one of my extra pairs.
"Take these to your friend. I hope they help her read the music. There's no need to return them. I have many. Please tell her that I love her and I think of her and her husband often. My name is Boyd Campbell, and I will do my very best to attend the performance."
There are a number of structures named for my family. It's honestly more than a bit embarrassing when I'm inside one of them. It's just another reminder of how difficult it's been to do anything people might know me for more than they know of my uncle or father, or mother.
I have no delusions about Alzheimer's and what it does to people. I know this could be one of the last performances for this brilliant and talented woman. It will be almost unbearably sad for me to be in the building named for my father listening to this performance, but it will be almost unbearably beautiful as well, not just because of how well she sings but because of the many golden threads that extend from that moment, connecting me to my past and the people I love and lost.
That's what Christmas is about, isn't it? All the gossamer threads and breezes between ourselves and our past and our lives and our loves? I haven't celebrated Christmas in a long time because I felt like the weight of memory was killing me, sort of like how the loss of memory sometimes kills brilliant people. This Christmas is different, though. The weight of memory is lifting me. If this woman can use my spare pair of glasses to help her give one of her last performances, then that might be the best Christmas gift I've ever given to myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment