I am an early riser. I used to describe myself as an early to bed,
early to rise type of girl, but such is not the case anymore. It hasn’t been this way for several
years. I’m tired when I go to bed. Experts tell us that for good sleep hygiene
we need to adhere to a schedule. Go to
bed at say 10 pm and rise at 6 am. The
thing is, I go to bed at 10 pm but just as I begin to relax enough to doze, my
mind begins to think of all of the things I have yet to do or to say on paper. So,
I open my notebook and begin to write of things I have experienced, thought of
or things which have transpired in my day.
Today it was the woman who was in
the memory care unit in the assisted living where my mother resides. I walked around the circle to my mother’s
room and as I glanced to my left (this is where the door to memory care is
secured) there was a woman who was gently pounding on the door. She mouthed, “Get me out of here.” I stopped
in the hallway, unsure of what to do. I
knew I couldn’t help her, both in a physical sense and in the emotional
sense. She wanted out of there. Was she referring to the memory care unit or
to the disorganization which dementia now caused?
Tonight, I lay in bed thinking
about that woman. Was there some way I
might have helped to decrease her fear, her cries for help of things imagined? Perhaps not, perhaps so. My mind then thinks about my mother, now
spared the inevitability of that move to memory care. I do not want her to become that woman
standing on the other side of the door.
