Through Forgotten Memories: 11 Poems Exploring Dementia
Written: April 5, 2023
Academic Papers
Youth
Memories of my mother bring to mind
How she was…
Vibrant and beautiful,
Her lovers drawn by her delightful whit.
The sparkling conversations
Iridescent innuendos
And seductive whispers
Like fish struggling in a cast net,
Men were pulled toward
Her enchanting,
Mesmerizing,
Youth
Laughter
Childhood memories,
Cascading
on waves
of sunlight
Her laughter filled the air.
Remembered still in warmth flooding my cheeks
Happiness honoured
My mother laughed with abandon.
Ladylike, not at all.
Head thrown back,
Blonde hair tossed in the wind
Blue eyes sparkling like the ocean
Rose stained lips opened into wide oh’s
The sound was loud and powerful
She didn’t giggle softly.
She embraced the laugh like she embraced me
With everything in her as others
Watched with envy.
Making me wish that I could now laugh with such ease.
Silhouette
Standing
Staring at her back,
the shape of her…My mother was
Feminine grace captured in hourglass curves
Her beauty unparalleled…her wit both bit and engaged
I measured myself to her in every form, wondered if a child
Could grow her straight lines into those same curves
…her mind into that same depth of thought
Like a shadow, I always felt thin
And not worth knowing
When held up to
Her beautiful
Grace
But light shifts
Casting shadows upon
Faces now darker than before
The shadow of a child aspiring to reach
That same silhouette she’d admired from behind
But my mother’s silhouette had changed—become thinner
The beauty fading —stress prevailing—mind failing
Frail, confused, strength forgotten — little hints
Of an unknown spectre had risen to cast
The shadow of pain and fear
Across her beautiful
Grace.
Forgetful
Forgetful started as
Little things,
Forgotten names,
Silly stories of
Shoes left in ovens
Friends stealing towels
Walks through stores where you were turned around.
Little things that made us laugh.
That led to little furrows of worry on my brow.
Little things that began to pile up,
The laughter slipped away
As I realized that little things
Grew into even bigger things
Hinted at all that was wrong
Forgetfulness on levels far more complicated than before
Levity lost
Denial embraced
It’s just little things
We said, but we knew
As each day, my mother, you, slipped further and further away
To a time where we didn’t exist.
And of my love, you became
Forgetful.
Truth
Well, now we know…
The boom of the bell, the world split apart. Dark words I could no longer hear as my head swelled with…Grief…Anger…Fear…
Now we know…
My mother sitting there, the doctor’s lips turned in a sympathetic frown as he continued to speak. Nothing but a buzzing sound—the ringing echoes of the bell tolling out the hell we had entered.
Now we know…
Mom! Are you there? Do you not hear? Why are you not screaming as the voices in my head are screaming? Don’t you know you’ve been lost? That you are going to lose everything. Me, you, your memories, our life together. Will I still be your daughter?
Now we know…
Know what? What the hell is this sentence…this word? Dementia the doctor repeated over and over like the bell raising the alarm that this time we couldn’t fight through it. Each boom echoing those moments winding down—until we are nothing but strangers bound by the tolling bell.
Now we know…
Your voice, so calm. How the hell can you be so calm when you are going to lose so much? When I am going to lose you. Your eyes filled with resolve…filled with acceptance.
Now we know…
No, I will not allow that acceptance. We will fight the bell calling out the minutes until the end. We will fight the countdown and rage against the unfairness of it all. Dementia will not be that bell of doom that leads us to the end. You will stay with me, my mother, my friend, and we will fight this together. But you placed your hand upon mine and tears burned hot against our cheeks as you said…
But at least we know.
Dementia
Diagnosis laid upon us.
Emotions rose; threatened to drown all who loved her
Mom’s death sentence felt like
Evil had entered our lives.
No more memories would she share
Time and disease would wipe them away faster than we could create them; replaced with…
Irritation, frustration, confusion in a woman scared
As our mother became lessened by her diagnosis of our pain.
Sundown
Sunset was a favorite time we shared,
The brilliant reds, purples, yellows…
As the sun slipped beneath the horizon.
Sundown
A special time to laugh and talk
Curled in blankets on patios
Sipping on warm tea as we watched night settle in.
Sundown
Ended our long days
Settled us comfortably
Peacefulness accompanied a quite night.
Sundown
But that peace was shattered
Sunset no longer a comfort
No longer a shared love we experienced together.
Sundown
Where new colours clashed in
Anger, violence, fear
As the sun slipped beneath those horizons.
Sundown
Sundowners, sundowning
New words, new moments that made us shake
You became lost as the light began to fade.
Sundown
Restlessness kept you from sitting still
Sent you running down darkened halls as night settled in.
Made us lose you again each
Sundown
Stumbling
Dark roads
Bare feet stumbling
Red and blue lights flashing in the night
Where am I? Who are you? Where are you taking me?
The police officer was asked as he led her to his car.
Middle of the night phone calls.
Your mother is at the hospital
We found her again, wandering down the street with nothing
But a nightgown,
Her bare feet black from the dirty road
As I stare at them kicking off the hospital blanket
Demanding to go home.
But home is no longer safe
And we are stumbling to find our new norm
Where you shift between who you used to be
To someone violent and angry and unknown
As you rage against the inevitable step.
Of being placed on a new road
Safe in a home that is not your own.
No longer allowed to wander
Lost down dark highways with no one around
Our new norm leaving us stumbling
Knowing soon you’d find yourself on
An even darker road alone.
Anger
Blue shimmering powder
Placed upon your eyelid.
You laugh at the colour and say,
“He loves me in this shade.”
I nod, the tears slipping from my eyes
As I remember the same blue powder
Swiped across my lids at nine as you laughed,
“Now, you are just like me.”
But I can’t be like you mom.
I wanted your vitality, your humour
Your intelligence, your youth.
I can’t be this part of you that never existed
Within my memories or my life.
You talk of lovers that you’ve lost
As though, in a moment, they’d be at your door.
And I pretend that everything is how you want
That your life never saw years where I played a part.
Anger fills me
At you
At the world
At life for allowing this to happen
I was never supposed to be forgotten.
Because I could never imagine forgetting you.
Or the blue shimmering powder that I place
Upon your lids as you laugh and say,
“He loves me in this shade.”
Understanding
I thought my mother lost
Everything between us gone
Like paper burning up in a fire
Just ashes of what once had been
I hated that fire
Burning her mind away
Leaving someone I never knew behind.
A stranger who was as confused of me
As I was of her
Two people having to get to know each other
Over and over again
It was exhausting…
Heartbreaking…
Soul crushing…
Until I began to understand
That those moments from before
Weren’t lost as they lived in me.
The good, the bad, those boring memories,
all new treasures in time to hold.
And my mother as she shifted in her skin,
Was a new stranger for me to meet
To cherish
To create fresh memories that I could keep
A new person with a familiar face
To love until the very end.
Loss
Are you there, Mom?
It’s me.
“It’s nice you visited today…” she says.
a moment of joy that she isn’t gone completely.
That she sees me and knows
Her daughter standing before her.
“What is your name dear?”
Joy turns to sadness,
Confusion swirls in eyes not understanding
Who I am
Who she was
All those shared moments lost between us.
Laughter gone from her lips.
Sparkling conversations stilled
Iridescent innuendos of youth silenced
Lost to me
Lost to her
Illness ravaged her mind before it ravaged her body
Leaving all who love her
Mourning that loss
Long before her body is gone.