Christmas at the Edge of Depression
December 25, 2008
by Norla M. Antinoro, PhD
I baked all day. Sugar cookies for a woman who is trying to get through her first Christmas without her children - seems Dad, her ex, offers a richer experience during these holidays having a larger family for the kids to play with. I bake and she decorates saying every now and then “There are no kids here.”
Her mother helps me shape the dough for the next batch. At the next table playing Rummikub are older people whose families have made one excuse or another for not coming to pick them up today. All of Portland is drivable except, it seems, the cul de sac where their children and grandchildren live…seems they all just happen to live on unplowed cul de sacs. They neither realize that no one came to get them because no one wants to have them over for the holiday. They are both rather obnoxious in the eyes of most people - I have never heard a group of people complain this much about anyone as about these two. I feel so sorry for them because they really do not know why they are being left behind - like the poor kid who ends up at school for the xmas break when the rest get to go home for the holidays.
So I bake a few more cookies and smile a lot. And make a few more for the woman with Alzheimer’s who can never remember much but knows her neighbor down the hall is sick and needs cookies and she will take her some so we prepare a plate together for the woman whose name she cannot remember. Then we bake a few more for the man with dementia who knows that woman across the room and thinks she is his wife because she tells him what to do and he calls her Jerry which is of course not her name. He suddenly looks up and waves and smiles and I ask him who he is waving at and he says “Whoever will wave back. It’s amazing how many strangers will wave and smile..” and I look and his next door neighbor is waving back at him.
And from the next table I hear again the almost tearful murmur “There are no kids here.” and we start to clean up, laying the white table cloths for dinner , helping the 98 yr old lady who has 50 relatives but only 21 could come by to see her this week because of the snow and she is amazed to think of her baby, her youngest son, as being a great grandfather. She tells her favorite story for the fourth time this week - about how Art Linkletter, himself in his 90s, went to a retirement home and walked up to an elderly woman and said “Do you know who I am?” and the old woman said “No. But ask at the office and they’ll tell you.” and she giggles and squints to see who I am, a little frightened, and recognizes me and smiles “Oh It’s you. I’m glad I came. When can we go to Goodwill? I hear it’s a nice store.” And the assistant manager gets annoyed with an old woman with Alzheimer’s because she wants her gift opened and it was not picked in the white elephant exchange and she says “Clara you knew when the game started. It’s over now.” And I hand her a cookie and smile and say “Remember the Alzheimer’s.” and she mutters :”I know.” and her husband says “Oh Hell. I’ll open her damned present.” and he does and Clara smiles to see the 24″ working wooden nutcracker standing there gleaming in his snazzy red and white uniform. In a week she will wonder where her nutcracker went. In two weeks after that she won’t remember ever having one. And yet she smiles and laughs and gives a gift more precious than the very expensive nutcracker with her good humor in the face of a world whose light is a little dimmer every day.
And I set the table for those who are left behind. And try to smile in the face of so many confused and broken hearts for they really don’t understand why they are left here while the others go out to play. But the little old woman who received the cookies from the woman with Alzheimer is herself gathering cookies to take to another who was left behind - and even in their confusion they are smiling and working and trying to help each other. Clara spends all her remaining energy gathering donations for two local shelters and carrying them to the shelters each week. And as she walks beside me toward our apartments she says “You look tired. What have you been doing.” “Just a little baking.” I say and she says “Cooking? Where? Not here I hope.” and I say “The cookies.” and she says “Oh. Yes. I forgot the cookies. I forget you know. What will we do for New Year’s do you suppose?”
Never before have I seen Christmas decorations done in black. This year it is quite popular. Gleaming shining black against silver, against gold, against red. This year it fits. We gather and do our best to be cheerful in the face of desperation. An elderly man moves in with his son and his wife because the bank the son worked for went under and the son is without a job. They will lose their house to foreclosure soon and so the father says “Let me pay you the rent I would pay here and we’ll save the house.” This, and not some legacy, is the gift we give our children now. Hold fast, give me your hand. Together we can stay afloat.
Death is our constant companion and we smile and keep on going. Heartbreak walks beside each of us, and we hang on.
No blue Christmas this but a grey one at the edge of depression.
Cookies anyone?
Comments
3 Comments »
-
Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
-
How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
Wow! What a sensitive, moving story. About thirty years ago, during a period of my own depression, I wrote to a friend: I’m not sure what freedom is, but I think it’s what we pay for our trinkets with. That was a corollary of the more common admonition about there being no free lunches in life. And, in the same way, Norla, I think your story points out another corollary of that same admonition: We’re not sure what Alzheimer’s is, but it may be what we pay for our longer lives with.
Dementia may be a cost of longer life but not Alzheimer’s. That can begin quite young and is hereditary. The 98 yr olds that live here tend to be easily frightened but not demented. Those with dementia tend to be in their 70s and 80s. That’s simply a pattern due to the fact that this is not a facility or institution, it is ‘elegant’ retirement living for independent adults of 55 or older. Once the dementia of any sort advances beyond a certain point they are moved out to a facility or institution designed to meet their needs. So they have to be pretty ‘with it’ to be still in independent living at 98-104.
But the Depression reference here was economic rather than mental health. A sort of double entendre actually.
The older folks I live among are scared most about what they see as the coming repeat of the Great Depression. They were all children or young adults when it happened the first time so they remember it well and are scared to death it’s coming back. One 89 yr old woman keeps saying “this time it’s going to be worse”
What a touching , wonderful story told from the heart. They keep telling me it has hit bottom , yet my own research says differently. I feel like I am being lied to and the floor is about to drop out from under my feet like the ride at the amusement park.
We live in scary , yet compelling and intriguing times..