When I first saw the dementia patients riding around in their wheelchairs with stuffed animals on their laps, or holding dolls, I thought, “What is happening here? Have I been sucked into some sort of bizarre movie?
And then my Mom got a doll. My sister-in-law, Nicole, gave one to her for Christmas, and when I saw her gently holding it, cooing and touching its toes, my heart squeezed with sadness and a longing I can’t really put into words.
My earliest memory is of my Mom rocking my newborn sister, singing that lullaby that all six of us know by heart and still hum when we are together. Her favorite thing was to visit each of us when we had our babies to help us. She came to New Orleans to “help me with my toddler” after my second baby, but she ended up taking over the newborn. She was there to help me post-birth, but I ended up serving her drinks and snacks, while she sat happily in the rocking chair with newborn Henry in her arms.
I’ve never seen her happier than with a baby in one arm and a cookie in the other.
So now that her mind has shifted into a dream state, I guess I should feel happy that she seems to love that doll. Instead, I feel a burning ache.
But then I remembered what Waldorf preschools teach about dolls.
When I was a Waldorf teacher, I was taught to cultivate a dreamlike state of gentle play in young children, to protect their beautiful imagination before more linear “real-world” consciousness takes over. Waldorf believes dolls help create a world of wonder for a child.
I wonder if they do the same for dementia patients?
It comforted my burning heart to think that the doll was weaving a world of wonder around my Mom.
It turns out the dolls are actually used as therapy for dementia patients.
Experts say therapy dolls cause a considerable decline in levels of anxiety and agitation in dementia patients, giving them something positive to focus on, and making them feel useful and needed. They are considered a “non-pharmaceutical” calming agent, helping dementia patients fulfill an attachment need, while easing feelings of isolation and sadness. Some believe that holding dolls may even bring back happy memories of parenthood.
I don’t know if that’s true, certainly for my Mom. I don’t think she even has parenting memories any more.
Nicole is a recent addition to our family and couldn’t have known that my Mom has always loved dolls.
Every year for Christmas, all four of us girls got a doll. One year, my mom commissioned a local woman make dolls that looked like each of her daughters. At that point, my sisters all had children, so their dolls had their hair pulled back in Victorian buns and were holding lots of babies in their arms. There was a basket next to them that came with the things they liked—and my oldest sister hated her doll because the basket contained gossip magazines. She thought that was rude considering she actually had a lot of other interests.
I did see her point–my oldest sister is an amazing artist so a basket full of paintbrushes would have made more sense.
In any case, my Mom was giddy and thrilled when she handed me mine, which had blonde curls and wore a belly dance costume, golden roller skates, and was carrying an Oscar and a bouquet of flowers instead of a baby. I don’t love dolls, but I did appreciate all the things she had noticed about me. With six kids and my Mom working full time, I tended to get lost in the shuffle. My Mom loved to tell me about the time she left me at church, drove all the kids all the way home, then noticed I wasn’t in the car. She drove back to church in our orange VW Bus and I was sitting on the curb by myself at age 4. Maybe that’s why I’m so loud and colorful, so I don’t get lost?
But now my Mom looks lost all the time. When I visited her last week, I ran to her and threw my arms around her. She looked into my face with blank eyes, not recognizing me, which didn’t help ease my sobbing. I stayed next to her as long as possible, even while she slept.
I had brought her the book “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” a poem my father loved to recite to us in his deep booming voice, winking and blinking his eyes as he talked: “All night long their nets they threw to the stars in the twinkling foam; Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, bringing the fishermen home.” I read it to her as she fell asleep.
“And some folk thought ‘twas a dream they’d dreamed of sailing that beautiful sea…”
Is it strange that I want to shrink my Mom and carry her in my pocket so I can have her with me all the time, like a pocket full of starlight that I can throw up in the sky when it seems especially dark?
But I think it would be even better, if I could gift her pieces of my love to carry, her own pocket full of starlight, so that she could throw a handful up in the sky when her own night got too dark.
“So shut your eyes while mother sings, of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things as you rock in the misty sea.”
