Dementia Days

Today my children received a letter from their cousins – not an e-mail or a voice mail or some other digital form of communication, but rather some carefully thought-out drawings, some letters, some numbers, all assembled artfully with crayons and pens on real paper, sent in a real envelope – and today, deposited into our mailbox.

There are many things in our society that, with the development of new technologies, have changed for the better. However, I belong to the group of people who lament the loss of letter writing as a form of communication. Many values rapidly disappearing among us are represented in a well written letter: It takes time to construct, thoughtfulness to express what is important, more thoughtfulness to leave out what is not, and calm and quiet to put it all down on a piece of paper, not to mention the skill of writing (or drawing – in the case of my kids and their cousins) so other people can understand and appreciate the missive. There is delay of gratification and strengthening of patience when waiting for a response.

In the early nineties, before wide use of the internet and e-mail, I spent a couple of years in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. There was a phone at the post office in the regional capital, about 50 miles from my village, and, about once a month, I’d arrange a call with my parents. Other than that monthly call, all communication with friends and family back home took place via letters. As many of you can imagine, a Peace Corps volunteer has plenty of time to fill (for a great book on this subject, check out “The Village of Waiting” by George Packer). With a longing for home and the calm to dedicate myself to each letter for several days, I would pour out my heart over dozens of pages. Not all of my letters made it home, but my mother and father dutifully collected all they received. And now, upon my father’s death and my mother’s dementia, I once again hold these letters in my hands.

In his responses, my father mastered the quantity of letter writing. Every day he went to work, he’d compose a one-page letter to his youngest daughter – me – during the entire time I was away. These messages mainly consisted of weather reports, some events in the family, mostly what one would today consider “touching base.” However, I will never forget the dedication it must have taken to keep up this connection.

My mother mastered the quality of letter writing. Though not as frequent as my father’s correspondence, my mother’s letters were filled with emotion, caring questions about what I had written, comments about the pictures I had sent home. In many ways, I may have been in closer contact with my parents during this long absence from home than I had ever been before.

Now, as my sisters and I sift through the myriad of boxes of memories, we are, of course, finding an abundance of letters: letters from my father’s mother to him while he was traveling as a bachelor, letters from my mother to friends in former East Germany, letters from cousins on the West Coast, letters from colleagues across the globe, and many, many letters my mother has begun, but wasn’t able to complete because Alzheimer’s got in her way. Finding one of these letters that begins “Dear Alana, …” and is followed by a beckoning blank page demonstrates how so much can be expressed with so little. I want to say, “I know, Mutti. I love you, too!”

Of course, then there are the other “letters” my mother has written since the onset of dementia. The many tribulations that follow the path of dementia trapped my mother in a cycle of anger and paranoia over lost and misplaced items, shining a light of suspicion on anybody in the vicinity of her possessions. Missing music CDs clearly must have been abducted by her husband, my father. Lost keys may have been stolen. Drawers and cabinets never looked the same as how she left them. So somebody was “messing with her stuff.”

When I was a child and things were misplaced in our house, my mother jokingly referred to “the ghost with the name ‘nobody’” as the culprit. In the years of Alzheimer’s, many of her notes were addressed in a similar way: “To whoever has been taking my CDs, Don’t. I really need them.” Or: “Don’t touch my things. They are mine.” It has been over a year now since my mother was able to write these notes, and I miss them. I miss the feisty woman who would battle that ghost named “nobody.”

So, I encourage my children to keep up their correspondence with their cousins; and I hope letters will continue to be written, whether they are addressed to family, friends, pen-pals, or a ghost named “nobody.”

Yesterday, my husband and I carried the last remaining furniture pieces out of my mother’s big storage unit. It was a momentous occasion, the end of a story of stuff that has been going on in my family for a very, very long time.

I grew up in Germany, where my father, originally from Washington State, and my mother, originally from Berlin, consolidated their possessions in a house in the suburbs of Munich. My father had spent a great deal of his life traveling. So, masks and paintings on the walls, bowls and statues in the shelves reminded him of his footloose and fancy-free bachelor days. He also was quite the bookworm and instead of walls, we had bookshelves in many rooms.

My mother had lived through most of World War II in Berlin, an experience that left the child survivor with a passionate need for security, security as an adult often sought in stuff – things with which she could outfit our little nest, items that would show the world in Scarlet O’Hara’s words: “I will never be hungry again!” It is quite possible that Sigrun could have been categorized as an oniomanic. However, I believe my mother never felt much regret for her purchases, but rather, like a child given a special gift, enjoyed and appreciated each one of her acquisitions.(If you have read the post “Coocoo for Coco” you know that she took advantage of her extensive wardrobe.)  Nor did she buy only for herself. She loved shopping for her family just as much, if not more.

I sometimes wonder whether the pervasive need of the WWII generation to collect sweeteners – which, by the way transcends cultures: in Germany, my aunt collected sugar cubes – is linked to the memories of less stable times. In the US we might consider the link between the Great Depression and Sweet’N Low. And, if there is a connection, what will our generation be collecting when we feel our life slipping away from us – computer chips?

But back to our story of stuff: So, my parents had filled a house with two lifetimes of things. Then my father passed away and my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer Disease. And three daughters, who until then got to be the footloose and fancy-free generation, had to step up to the plate. My oldest sister spent an entire month sifting through the Berlin apartment where my parents had since moved. (How they managed to cram the contents of an entire house into a two bedroom apartment is beyond me.) Everything was packed up and transported to a storage facility in the US.  That storage facility flooded and everything had to be moved to another unit. Then we moved to another city and everything had to be transported to yet another storage facility. And, over the course of the following year, brave daughter #1 sifted once more through all those possessions, all those memories, all that stuff.

Out of three units, she chiseled two; out of two finally one. All that we are left with now is my mother’s memory care room and a small unit of things we are keeping.

I cannot count the amount of times we swore never to do this to our children, to rid ourselves of our proverbial sweetener collections before it is too late, to borrow books from libraries, not create libraries in our own homes, to only keep what we need. Few lessons imprint themselves on the brain as much as the ones that are paid for with blood, sweat and tears. And that is something else difficult to count: the many tears, the laughter, and the bruised knees we shared in the storage units, marveling at two lives spread out in front of us in boxes and piles.

P.S.: Although only tangentially related to this post, “The Story of Stuff” (www.storyofstuff.com)  is an excellent 20-minute animation that, if you haven’t already, you should take the time to view.

P.P.S: If the true price of stuff were calculated including storage, transportation, frustration, and spent energy, and that price were listed when you bought the items, how much less stuff would the average person accumulate?