A friend sent the instructions for a home dementia test: have a potential patient draw a clock. If they can’t put the clock hands in the right place, they have mild dementia; if they can’t draw the numbers, they have moderate dementia; if they can’t even draw a round clock, they have severe dementia.
My grandfather had been drooling and forgetting things and tearing toilet paper into tiny pieces, all dementia symptoms. But I did not expect him to draw a dome on the top with the numbers 1-3 on the right and 4-7 on the left. After all, he could still recognize me. He added some dotted lines in the middle–“These are clothes for the clock.”
His shaky hand put the pencil down. He could barely make a straight line. But “Haha,” he laughed at his clock clothing idea.
I am no expert in dementia. I have done a two-hour training on the topic as a hospice volunteer. I don’t fear the patients’ decay, I fear what the decay leads to: death. To a lesser extent I fear the oblivion–death while alive.
I studied my friend’s rubric again and couldn’t quite accept the result of severe dementia. Days later, after I left my grandparents, I called my mom, asking her to convince my grandma to take my grandfather to treat dementia. Both of us knew she wouldn’t. She’s someone who mocked me for seeing an OBGYN after getting pregnant. Life happens. Everyone has a fate. That’s her belief.
I buy them home exercise machines that they leave in the corner, vitamin D and fish oil that sit there to expire. I do not force them to practice my way to stay healthy. I buy what I buy to feel better, but deep down I don’t know if what I insist is right.
“Don’t fall again,” I told my grandfather on the phone.
“I have no more falls,” he said with confidence. “Even if I fall I just get more practice.”
“Practice of what?”
“Of falling!”
He chuckled again. Then he hung up. It’s me who needs to practice falling.