A Life's Long Shadow

April 2014

"It seems like Stella has been gone a lot longer than two weeks," my mother said last night.
It does feel as if we've all gone on with our Stella-free lives rather easily but Stella is not forgotten. Even though I don't feel her, or hear her, or even sense her, Stella is still here.
Stella wasn't an easy dog to live with and now that she is physically gone from our home, I believe she had a huge energy that overpowered everyone else's, particularly mine and including Abby, our three and a half year old dog. We are adjusting to having the energy level in our home drop to a normal level; it's no longer dominated by the force that was Stella.
I can't tell you how lovely it is to walk a dog on a loose leash. After 12 years with the incorrigible Stella, it's a delight to walk an easy dog like Abby. If Marmaduke and Cujo had had a puppy, that dog would have been Stella.
A friend who had two Boxers once remarked that she thought she preferred having only one dog because with two, you never really get to know their separate personalities as fully. I'm now seeing what Abby is like when she isn't battling the effect of Stella's energy, Stella's presence, Stella's constant vigilance for food.
"I dropped a peanut half on the floor while making supper," my mother told me on Tuesday, "and Abby didn't get off the couch."
Stella would have eaten the peanut before it hit the ground.
So our household is adjusting. I'm adjusting. Stella is gone but she is not forgotten.
I haven't yet written about the remarkable last three days of Stella's life because I'm editing another book and can't step out of that zone. Besides, I promised Stella I would write the story of her life and making that promise seems to have evaporated my immediate grief. She's hanging around because of that promise, knowing we have one more walk to take together.
Ah, yes, two more. Stella wanted her ashes spread where she loved to walk so over the field she'll go. Her epilogue.

Artful Afternoon

Artist Erin Laende helps care partners with their sculpture.

I spent Sunday afternoon at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in downtown Halifax as an observer of a joint program between the AGNS and the Alzheimer Society of Nova Scotia for an article I'm writing for the Chronicle-Herald.
This is the second season for "Artful Afternoons" which began in 2014 to provide people living with dementia and their spouses, children or friends a chance to spend an afternoon once a month in the studio. Each session is inspired by a current exhibit at the gallery -- April's was sculpture -- and begins with a short tour followed by 90 minutes in the studio doing a project based on the topic. Yesterday, the pairs worked on sculpting birds out of newspaper, masking tape, glue and tissue (papier mache).
What I noticed as I wandered around taking photos and talking with people is that the afternoon isn't about what is created, or even finishing it; it's about having fun and socializing. It was interesting to note those who clustered in one big group and were loud and chatty with each other, and those pairs who chose to sit by themselves away from the crowd, to be in their own quiet space with each other.
I'm not a good enough photographer to capture the uniqueness of each set of care partners. Elizabeth's big smile as she laughed. Jack's eyes lighting up as he talked about his cat. Michael's animation as he talked about his long-ago days as an art teacher.
Whenever cuts are needed in schools and in communities, it's always the creative arts that are hit first and hardest and yet it often is art and music and dance that is able to slip inside a person' and bring alive the part of their brain not (yet) affected by whatever neurological disorder or injury that person is living with.
Anyone passing by that room, hearing the laughter and the chatter, would have no idea half of the people sitting around those tables were in the early stages of dementia.
Exactly

Grey Skies

No matter how grey the skies are, how thick and moist the air is, no matter how much we need some sunshine now to dry up our yards and the fields, the sight of fuzzy pussy willows bursting to their limits as a sign of spring mean
all is good.
The robins came back, the ospreys arrived, the river opened up and the pussy willows puffed out.
Funny how they look like little snowballs along the rain-darkened branches. Even the first crocuses coming up in my garden are white. We are still snow blind.
I first wrote "snow bling". That's much better: Pussy willows and crocuses are the early jewels of spring.

Earth Day

If we keep going down this road 

-- clear cutting our woods and not replanting what we take -- 

we will not carry down this road forever.

What trees provide to the earth

-- not just to humans but to birds and animals,

to the air and the soil --

far outweighs what we gain by their destruction.

Oxygen, food and habitat.

That's what trees provide 

but to more than humans. 

If the birds and the animals disappear because the trees are gone,

how can we not expect humans to follow right behind?

It is too bad we cannot disappear first,

and let the trees take back the earth. 

Oxygen, food and habitat.

Those truckloads of logs driving past our rural homes

are not a sign of progress and a booming economy.

They are omens of

demise.

We, too, need oxygen, food and habitat,

and if we think those come without the help of trees,

we are too ignorant too survive.

Put down your phone, step away from the computer,

get out of your car,

and walk on the earth today.

Put your hand against the bark of a tree

and say thank you.

The trees have ears.

 

A Time of Goodbyes

Rosie-Ro

When I arrived home from church yesterday, my husband turned off the vacuum and said, "I have something to tell you."
Good news rarely comes from a statement like that, unless perhaps the shockingly good news of a lottery win.
"Rose is dead."
Rosie is the last of our three rabbits and unlike the other two, she appeared in good health and fine spirits. Lonely, perhaps, since her sisters died in 2011 and 2013. She seemed to like to watch the chickens wandering around outside her space in the chicken coop. For that last two winters, she's had more of a "condo" space than a pen and if she'd wanted to, she could have hopped up onto bales of hay or around the whole outer coop area. Are rabbits nocturnal? Maybe she did a lot of exploring at night when we weren't around.
It was a bit of a shock to hear she had just died. Unlike Beulah the chicken or Stella the dog, we had no indication Rosie wasn't feeling well. I didn't even have a chance to say good bye. I tossed some kale to her Saturday evening when I went out to collect the eggs, said, "Hey, Rosie-Ro," the way I always do as she munched down on her favourite food.
She didn't even look dead when Dwayne brought her out of the pen yesterday afternoon to bury her. The only difference from the photo above was that in death, her ears were laid back.
"Are you sure she's dead?" I asked.
 Rosie was a nice bunny for one not treated as a pet. Dwayne says that when he put his hand in his pocket, where he'd put a carrot or some stalks of kale, she'd lift up on her hind legs and sniff the air. Her looks reminded me of Thumper from the movie, Bambi. She didn't have a lot of freedom but she was safe and she loved her "cottage", the outside hutch where she spent the spring, summer and fall. She, too, has missed another spring, didn't get one last summer.
So now Rosie, who joined our flock when we got chickens in 2008, is gone and we are now rabbit-less. She has joined her sisters buried in the ground at the top of the field under slabs of shale.
I think this is enough death for awhile.

Peppa, Daisy and Rosie in the "cottage".

Spring Spurts

My fall planting project, to create a swath of daffodils along the ditch by the road, was not nixed by all the snow. I dug the bulbs into an area that gets lots of sunshine and is clear of snow early and that's the saving grace for these courageous spurts bursting through the needles and the leaves. In most spots, I should add. There is one area by the stop sign that is still blanketed by snow; we might see those daffs in May!
We have the sunshine, now we just need a south wind to warm everything up.
Isn't this what we love, and long for, about spring? Hope. You can't help but feel optimistic on a day like today.

Why I Walk

We walk in memory of a father and a father-in-law.

The Walk For Alzheimer's, supporting the Alzheimer Society of Nova Scotia, is Sunday, May 3.
I walk because my father had Alzheimer's disease. I walk in his memory and I walk to make a difference in the lives of others living with dementia and their caregivers. I walk because Alzheimer's disease and other dementias are a fact and denial is not an option.
I created TEAM PACHYDERMENTIA -- because elephants never forget -- because it is a group effort to support those living with dementia and those caring for someone living with dementia. I created the team because this isn't about me, it's about all of us with personal experience of dementia. We all know someone who is affected by dementia in some way.
Family, friends and neighbours have a role to play in helping those living with dementia, whether it's donating money to the Alzheimer Society of Nova Scotia, phoning a friend to see how he or she is doing, taking a pot of soup to a couple struggling to remain together at home, offering to clean the house during that transitional week between home and long-term-care facility or joining us on the walk.
With our ageing population, cuts to health care and not yet enough training and education around person-centred dementia care, we need to think in terms of being in this together, of supporting each other on this long journey like no other. I don't use words like "fight" or "battle" or even "struggle" or "suffer" any more because yes, my mother and I struggled as caregivers and yes, my father suffered but that was because of everything we didn't know then. I've changed my language because I want to change attitudes towards dementia, towards the men and women diagnosed with the disease and towards their caregivers. It's better to be "dementia friendly" than "dementia ignorant".
I walk because living with dementia and being a caregiver for someone with dementia can be very, very isolating. The more we know, the better we do, and the better we support each other so that no one walks down that long road alone.
If you would like to join our herd or if you would like to donate to Team Pachydermentia, please visit the website www.walkforalzheimers.ca and click on either "Register" or "Sponsor A Walker".
You also may contact me by email (use the button to the right). Your donation of time and/or money is greatly appreciated by a whole lot of people. Perhaps even your family, friends and neighbours.
The herd thanks you!