Snapshots of Dementia: A Tale of Two Blessings
Photo by Colin Davis on Unsplash It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the age of coronavirus; it was the epoch of pandemic. We had dementia before us; we had faith behind us. And through it all, we had a God who loved us and provided for our every need. We moved to our new home in the upstate of South Carolina in late November of 2019, right as the first echoes of COVID-19 sounded in far-off countries. We had only just started to settle in when the lockdown came, and especially because of Tom’s dementia, we exercised what many describe as “an abundance of caution.” “You don’t want him in the hospital without you,” our primary care doctor told me. “And that’s exactly what would happen.” So we watched church services online. We visited with faraway family members on the phone and online. Our local daughter and her husband did our grocery shopping. And for many months, we saw few people other than medical professionals—and family. We were then—and are now—so thankful for family. Yes, we could have quarantined from them as well—but without that at least weekly connection with our daughter, son-in-love, and preschool-age grandson, I’m not sure what would have happened. We needed those hugs, that laughter, that break from our increasingly quiet routine. Tom needed that. I needed that. As the lockdown wore on, a temporary family member joined us: a teenage foster grandson, a former student of our daughter’s. Arriving in November 2020, he would only live with her family for the rest of that school year. You might not think a fifteen-year-old special education student who had lived his entire life in South Carolina and a sixty-five-year-old man living with dementia who had traveled the world as a professional musician and pastor would have much in common. But in this case, you’d be wrong. We figured it out the first time “H” came to visit. Our daughter often taught from home, and sometimes H had school from home as well. But he didn’t always have to log in during the day, so he sometimes came to us instead. “I have to work, so he’ll be spending most of the day with Daddy,” I told our daughter the first time she asked if H could visit. “I know, Mom. They can just hang out.” And hang out they did. Turns out they had simple board games (Uno, Yahtzee, Sorry!, even Candyland) in common. H showed incredible patience when he had to remind Tom whose turn it was or when Tom argued about a roll of the die, which was often. He only chuckled when Tom got...
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