Mondays with Myrtle
A Dementia Diary, Part 1
When I was young my family had a bird. In a cage. His name was Bingo. Every morning when we removed the night cover, Bingo fluttered against the thin metal prison bars with powerless, futile furor, persisting until he wearied and gave up. Throughout the day, that bird sang. He sang and sang and sang. I always thought that Bingo only sang when he was happy. Now, I wonder …. what if he wasn’t singing; what if he was screaming?
Myrtle is in hospice and I have converted my dining room into a bedroom for her and that simple bird, gone for over 45 years now, keeps coming to mind.
Myrtle talks ceaselessly about going home. I don’t know what to do. She resolves to go there at least 50 times a day. Earlier this week she tried to puzzle out how she would get to Philadelphia. It went like this:
Myrt: I can take a train to Philly, can’t I? Does a train run past this hotel?(She is referring to my home, deep in the Pine Barren woods of NJ.)
Me: What will you do when you get to Philadelphia, mom?
Myrt: Go to my home.
Me: How will you get to your home?
Myrt: I’ll take a bus.
Me: (Starting to feel a bit exasperated) ….But, mom, you live here. You don’t have a home in Philadelphia.
Myrt: I have to have a home there!
Me: Why?
Myrt: Because that’s where the bus GOES.
Me: (heavy sigh) Hey, let’s build something with these blocks. Watch me ….. Hey, let’s build something with these blocks. Watch me ….
And I show Myrtle how the tangram blocks can be arranged together to make any shape in the world. I don’t explain that she lives in the suburbs of NJ with me and that she hasn’t had a home in Philadelphia for many, many years. I learned my lesson weeks ago. Now, I never attempt to mend the holes in her consciousness.
She starts to move the pieces. Slowly, ever so slowly. It is hard for her, but she concentrates on it for a good while and I clean up my kitchen, fold laundry, and get my son to do his homework. When I come back she shows me what she made.
Me: Pretty cool, Mom. What is it?
Myrt: It’s a bird. It’s a lucky bird.
Me: Oh, I see it! Yep, that’s a bird alright. I’m impressed! So, why is it lucky?
Myrt: Are you kidding me? It has wings. It can fly.
Myrtle notices birds. She enjoys watching them. My husband put a bird feeder right by the window of her bedroom (aka former dining room) and in between her dozing-off and her uncontrollable weeping and her incessant questions about finding her parents, she closely watches the little customers that come to nibble. The Eastern Bluebird is her favorite.
Maybe she is imagining their immense freedom. I wonder if she longs for her youth when she was as nimble of mind and body. I wonder if she thinks about her life before her wings were clipped and her feet were bound by this ghastly descent which consumes her soul piece by little piece each day. I wonder if birds are her spirit animal.
Soon after moving into my home, she said to me as she watched the birds at the feeder: “What do you think they are saying?” I followed her gaze. The bird talk was certainly rich. They sometimes bobbed their heads as they sung on the branches of nearby trees. Was it for their own pleasure that they ran through sets of complex harmonics? They changed their notations so conspicuously that it sounded like improvisation. Is that possible, I wondered? No…these were smooth meditative runs. Then could it be the birds were merely saying, I am a bird? Not likely, I thought.
“That’s a very good question, mom”, I replied.
She turned to me, curiously: “Oh, are you in charge of this place?” she asked.
No, I could not understand the variations in their songs, the lengths of their pauses, the arrangements of their trilling phrases. But it was far too elaborate to be meaningless, I concluded. It’s a private language. Like Myrtle’s. My mom — now a flightless bird quavering with a strange song.
As I was settling her into bed that night, she called out in a shrill, frightened and plaintive voice. “Wait, wait, Rosemary!” Her face was pale and her eyes were terror-struck. “I’m afraid to drive the car”, her voice quivered. “I’ll need someone to drive me to the train. Ok?”
“Sure, mom. Don’t worry. I’ll drive you. Everything’s ok. Everything’s good.” Her head falls back in relief and she begins the soft recitations and wailings which precede her sleep. It is a kind of singing. Whimsical intonations. A lonely lullaby. Her birdsong, maybe.
