Pieces of June

Scott doesn't like this photo since it's a representation of his grandmother, June, living in a place she doesn't want to be. But it's, unfortunately, the only picture I took of her during our visit. Surrounding June and her dog Charlie are her daughter-in-law Terry, her son Mike, and Scott. 

When I returned yesterday from a work trip in Ketchikan and Scott asked me if there were any errands I needed to run, I said yes. I wanted to buy a frame for one of our wedding photos that we had promised to send to his grandmother.

Our travels down south two weeks ago (was it two weeks ago? – the period of time designated as February has almost ceased to exist to me, passing by far too quickly) were a mixture of emotions. There was sadness and frustration, boredom and acceptance, small splashes of enjoyment. Since returning, when asked by coworkers and friends about our trip, I’ve joked and called it an obli-cation – what one takes when visiting family.

Our first stop was Denver where Scott’s grandmother June now lives, in a brand new facility, split in two distinct units, that specializes in memory loss. One unit is for those who can still walk by themselves, eat by themselves, and generally function with the belief that they can still fool those around them into believing memory loss isn’t slowing them down. The other unit is for those who are too far gone, who have long stopped trying to pretend. June falls into the former.

(After our visit with her, I tried to jot down some notes so that I, myself, wouldn’t forget. We all lose memories, just in varying degrees of acceptance.)

If June didn’t have Charlie, I don’t know how she’d be. A perky old woman – slowed by age and dementia, separated from her husband – and her white,  puffball of a dog, loyal to her every move. When she saw us, she seemed to know exactly who we were, embracing us, showing us around, firing questions at us. Later we found out from Scott’s uncle Mike, June’s son, that these are tactics she uses to hide the memory loss, her generic questions and our specific answers helping her piece together who were really were.

Ten minutes into our visit, the questions became repetitive – “Did you see Baba?” (referring to her husband, Scott’s grandfather, Fred) “Where are you going?” “How long are you here for?” Sequences of events were hard for her to hold on to. When we passed by a pair of women sitting down, other residents of the facility, June wanted to introduce us. Before she started to though, she turned to Scott and asked, “Now remind me, you’re my grandson, right?”

She was wearing beige slacks that stopped at her ankles, a large long sleeve t-shirt that declared the Denver Broncos had been the winners of whatever division it is that gets them into the Superbowl (the program manager told us it had been a prize for correctly guessing how many pieces of candy were in a jar), and hot pink and black sneakers. Scott would point out later that she had no socks on.

We left June at dinner time and returned later in the evening. She was in her room and Lawrence Welk was on the television. When she opened to the door for us, she seemed to know who we were, saying, “I wasn’t sure if you’d return. I thought maybe you had gotten busy with something else and I would’ve understood.” Her room is furnished with pieces of her former home in Las Cruces – a small piano, a hope chest, a pair of comfortable chairs. On the shelves and walls are framed photos of her family – smiling children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. What was missing was a photo from Scott and mine’s wedding – June was surprised to learn that we were officially married. She had looked hurt when we told her and now I don’t know if it was a reaction to not being told or not remembering if she had been told. We promised we’d send her a photo to add to her collection.

Scott sat in one of the seats and I insisted she sit in the other, that the floor was where I wanted to be, closer to her dog Charlie. The picture on the TV show revealed flat colors and blurred lines, so that on the contemporary flat screen, The Lawrence Welk show looked exactly the way it did when it first aired, and June was transported back to that time. She talked about the show in present tense (“Doesn’t he look great for his age?”), not revealing any knowledge that the show no longer existed, that what we were watching was a relic of the past. I didn’t want to burst her bubble and I guess Scott didn’t either, because neither of us corrected her.

The next morning, June wasn’t nearly as composed. Her normal Sunday schedule was totally disrupted and it took some time for June to accept it. Instead of being picked up for church at 10:30 by her son and daughter-in-law, Mike and Terry, we all picked her up at 8:30 for breakfast; there’d be no church that day. June was wearing the same outfit as the day before and she agonized about not finding her socks and not being dressed appropriately for church. Mike and Terry told her again and again that they had gone to church the night before, so they weren’t going that morning. The plan was to go to breakfast. When June was finally out of the facility and seated in the car and we were on our way, she still asked, “Where are we going?” It wasn’t until we were at the diner and sitting around a table that she finally seemed to relax and let go of any control, of even trying to understand what was happening around her.

The doors of June’s new home are perpetually locked, from the inside and outside. No one can come in or go out without an employee allowing it. If one tries to get out from the inside, an alarm will go off. So when Mike, Terry, Scott and I were saying our goodbyes and leaving June, we all had to linger by the main door and wait for someone to let us out. Another resident of the home walked by and observed what we were waiting for. “It’s like a prison,” she said with contempt. June, forever the optimist, replied, “We live here. This is the way it has to be so we need to accept it.” And the woman said, “This is America for god’s sake.” 

The Power of Smell

When I woke up this morning, a certain smell of the wood stove had wafted upstairs and for the briefest of moments, I was transported to Bhutan. It smelled like a bukari – what the small wood stoves are called in Bhutan. I tried to capture the smell again, but it was gone.

There have been no smells or scents in Southeast Alaska that have brought me back to Tanzania or Bhutan or India, until this morning. 

My favorite rice paddies in Kanglung, a short walk away from our home in Bhutan.