Archive for January 17th, 2008
17
Jan
08
Fading Pictures
I think previously I mentioned Snowy’s reaction to a large framed family portrait photograph that we had hung on the wall across from her chair in the den. It was taken back in the late ’70’s and included Snowy, Pop, my 2 siblings, and myself.
Our attempt to look a little glam was retrospectively a bit humorous — one bro with a thick moustache, the other with a bit of a ‘fro, me, in my skinny days with long hair and made to wear a blue “gown” — you could kind of tell we were just going along with Snowy’s expectations for creating the perfect family portrait. She, likewise, was gowned — but on her it looked RIGHT and natural, and she pulled it off with regal poise. Pop, who was actually smiling (rare when he knew a camera was pointed at him), looked like Pop — he was always in a suit and he perched on his seat without the stiffness of a pose.
It was a ‘portrait’ that Snowy had hung in her room ever since, taking place of pride amidst other ‘portraits’ of us all on the large wall of their master room (over the large tv where we all had to notice). As they moved from their home to the brief stint in assisted living, the portrait moved and again had pride of place. And with Pop’s illness and death, the portrait moved with Snowy right in to the homes she has made with Chick and me.
Reading all the Alzheimer’s books/ websites/ etc., we followed a fairly common recommendation — have lots of photographs of family, past and present, as that helps the family member stay connected to those people — a constant memory spark. We have and will put pictures of our folks everywhere Snowy might have occasion to look (except the bathroom — that did not comport to her sense of decorum). My sibling and his family’s pictures are all over her bedroom – on the dresser, the chest of drawers, stuck in and smiling back at her from the mirror.
But at some point last fall, the Family Portrait, hung directly across from her in the den, just below a portrait photo of Snowy as a little girl hugging her mother around the neck, with a portrait she had made the same day as the Family Portrait of Chick as a little girl similarly hugging me around the neck because she wanted it as a companion piece), began to really bother her.
We would notice her staring and staring at it and getting a bit annoyed as she did. Chick dealt with it first, Snowy’s finally asking, who are those people? And Chick would go through the role call – Shu, 1st Son who was killed 20 years ago this Spring, 2nd Son in the hair he hasn’t worn in decades, Snowy, Pop.
First she would shake her head and say, Okay. But when it would come up again, then again, she was less believing of the roll call.
Chick mentioned to me that increasingly the picture was irritating and creating anxiety in Snowy, even triggering mutters about being fooled because she didn’t believe there was any reason for those people to be in that picture.
When I was home with Snowy while Chick was in the NE, the questioning of the portrait participants began again. As I pointed to the different people and named them and gave the relationships, she shook her head and didn’t agree that she knew my sibs and myself.
I honestly don’t know if she now has, and what they are, memories of my older sib. Other than pictures, my attempts to bring him into conversations from time to time to keep him forward in her head, a random gift of a cd with a song he recorded with one of the bands he belonged to from the early 70’s, it is challenging to hammer her with him, especially since his death was the source of daily tears from 1988 on. She doesn’t really react too much anymore when I try to talk about him.
My younger sib, who as cute as he was with his ‘fro, grew into a handsome man, and these decades later hasn’t looked like the young man he was captured to be in the shot.
I haven’t been as thin or as able to sit “posed” with my long “auburn” hair in a pale blue floor-length gown with transparent flowing sleeves (oh, my, goodness — and I did NOT pick it out– Snowy styled this shoot!), and as “plump” and shorter white-headed looking as I currently exist, it was hard to extrapolate the identity of that stubborn, young, newly-single mom, into the stubborn, old, long-alone gal who is hanging with Snowy today.
I think she acknowledged herself and of course knows Pop from deep in her heart. It was just irritating to the max that she was stuck in some picture with people she just didn’t get. It was around this time, too, that she questioned that she had any relationship to me and told me she didn’t have any children.
Finally, even though she had come back to knowing me and who I was to her, she was so irked by the challenge of that Family Portrait, a puzzle she could no longer solve, I took the darned thing down. That was an act so simple and a solution so obvious, I don’t know why we didn’t do it earlier. I think we thought that she would come back around to it and once again recognize this old memorialization of her brood. I think we thought she would want to keep one of these few portrait reminders of my late brother. I think we thought she would miss it.
She didn’t. I took it down after she went to bed one “night”, and in its place hung one of the paintings of flowers Snowy’s grandmother had painted and given to her. She loved it, didn’t realize it was replacing anything, and stopped being agitated by “those people”. It was a “hmmmm” moment.
This week, Chick told me, Snowy’s been questioning the mother-daughter pictures that still hang above this replacement. She recognizes (!) that the little girl in the one picture is Little Snowy and that is her mom.
But in the second picture, she’s having a bit of trouble with — when told, she can squint and ‘almost’ see me as the mom figure (although I think she was doubtful), but who IS that little girl? Little Chick in the picture is so young and has short, wispy blonde hair, and an earnest look as she follows the direction of the photographer to “grab momma ’round the neck” [she nearly strangled me-- I remember that well!]. Snowy can’t see it. The leap of faith is getting a bit too far for her to jump.
I don’t know if she’ll get a staring-puzzling campaign going with this picture or not. If she does, we’ll deal with it more quickly having already had the learning curve.
It just begs the question — where do we go when memories of us fade?
