writing through "Dementia Blog" by Susan M. Schultz

by Jefferson Hansen


Dementia Blog (Singing Horse Press) by Susan M. Schultz consists of a series of "prose poetic" remarks in each blog post. These remarks collage Schultz's coming to terms with her elderly mother's dementia with issues pertaining to teaching English, the Iraq War in 2006, family issues, and poetry criticism.


What follows are quotations from the book and my following remarks, drawn from my own experiences with three grandparents who died from complications related to Alzheimer's or dementia, In short, I will bounce my remarks off the main thread of the book, which deals with reflections on dementia.


(Quotes from book in italics.)

*     *     *

"Is there a spirit within dementia, if not a system of belief, then its flickerings, its necessary failures? Is its only belief paranoia, its only doubt a rooting for lost keys? Can spirit not, at its source, be this literal? A neighborhood for those who forget, leaving traces of their forgetting in what we remember?"

My grandfather was a master carpenter and house builder; although, ironically, he did it as a kind of "hobby." His real job was a factory worker.

His "spirit within dementia" was measuring, as a carpenter would measure. Toward the end of his life he wore three watches, checking and calibrating each every minute or so. I couldn't bear it.

Because he was my spirit.

As with many of us, I had a difficult childhood in many ways. In my mid-teens I worked for this man on his small acreage out in the country—upkeeping the house and barn he built, landscaping, gardening, and so on.

He became the solidity and confidence I so needed. 

& now I couldn't help him.

"My mother's life a loaded one, her words clues, symptoms to a foregone opening.The scholar translates death laments. But what do you call the lament that lacks death ... given she has escaped the institution?" (Liberties taken with recontextualizing Schultz's phrasing.)

My grandmother walked out of the hospital into a cold, clear, dry Wisconsin afternoon. An intravenous needle still stuck out from right below the inside of her elbow.

She stood staring into space, on the sidewalk outside the entrance to the hospital. None of us know how long she was there.

& neither did she.

"Incontinence (not yet). Anxiety (always). Loss of (you name it)."

My grandmother used to flush the toilet every 15 minutes. My grandfather, who still had typical faculties, tried to prevent it, but to no avail.

They lived in a very small town. My uncle told me that a city worker mentioned to him that an unusual amount of water was being consumed on my grandparents' street. He told him that it was his mother—my grandmother—flushing the toilet.

In her confusion.

"I write because I do not understand."

I based a character in a novel on my grandfather. It was clearly an admiring, though unflinching, portrait. I stared his dissolution from Alzheimer's straight in the face.

To come to terms.

To share with the world.

To bring narrative pulse and logic to this issue, to offer a way of knowing it in this essential fashion.

I think I alienated a number of members of my family. Apparently, they thought I violated privacy. Nobody has directly spoken to me about it.

Again, privacy.

They're of Scandinavian heritage.

"My mother forgets what distinguishes an instant from a decade, three days from 40 years. Her mother left three days ago."

My grandmother's round face seemed to grow elongated in her later years, as she held closely to my grandfather at all time, as if she were dizzy. Her face registered perpetual astonishment and perplexity—a world ever new is ever frightening, I suppose.

She remembered my grandfather's elbow.

"It bothers her sometimes she can't remember."

When my grandmother told me this, I confessed that sometimes I walk down the stairs and forget what I went into the basement for. I would stand for a while, shake my head, then finally retreat back up the stairs, empty-handed. We laughed. I tried to be a little uproarish. She was rueful.

"Her legs are white and thin, skin papery, covered with bruises and abrasions. On her shoulder more abrasions, her back bent forward, the spine crooked, as it has always been."

_____________________

Susan M. Schultz appears in AlteredScale.com 1. 

Susan M. Schultz is a poet, critic, and publisher who lives in Kane`ohe, Hawai`i on the island of O`ahu. She is author of a number of books of poetry, and she edited The Tribe of John: Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 1995). She edits Tinfish Press and teaches at the University of Hawai`i-Manoa.

Dementia Blog at Small Press Distribution.