These days, especially when we’re focused on staying in our homes, can present an opportunity to engage in activities we enjoy and to explore some new ideas, too. So, when a family member told me her good friend, Melissa R. Phillips, had launched a unique website, in memory of her mother,
“The Warm Hug Project provides donated handmade knitted or crocheted shawls to both men and women living with dementia. When the hugs of Caregivers, Nursing Home Staff, or Family are unavailable, The Warm Hug Project shawls are there to wrap the memory-impaired person in a soft sanctuary of reassurance.”
I noted there was even a helpful link to a YouTube video demonstrating “how to” make the simple stitch needed to create those colorful “warm hug” shawls for those wanting to acquire a new skill some may have always wanted to learn.
Perhaps The Warm Hug Project is a site and activity you, too, will find to be of special interest. These are times when we all likely seek comfort, but especially as we maintain distance from one another these shawls will convey their caring message. Receiving a tangible warm hug shawl for many will continue to be welcomed long after our current health crisis resolves.
Currently, many family members are separated from one another due to COVID 19, able to interact only via technological means, or some only able to engage from opposite sides of a window. For those individuals with dementia circumstances now could be most confusing with reassuring warm hug shawls most valued.
We often begin to fret as we enter the last half of our age span whether the little forgetful events we occasionally experience indicate we’re developing a serious mental problem. We fear having a dementia which can result in our having varying degrees of diminishing abilities, also sometimes altering our personalities in unexpected ways.
The most dreaded dementia is Alzheimer’s Disease which ultimately robs a person of themselves in every way. Friends and loved ones experience having the relationship being stolen from them. The extended period of time this disease progresses is sometimes described as “the long goodbye”. The individual’s personality gradually erodes as their cognitive skills and memory are lost, along with functional abilities including communication.
Caregivers are challenged physically and mentally to adapt to a person with Alzheimer’s. For loved ones this can be especially difficult. There are inevitable changes that can stress a caregiver’s patience to the extreme. The caregiver must take care of themselves during this time to maintain their own physical and mental health – easier said than done.
Not everyone will develop a dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, but meanwhile research for treatment and prevention continues.
I wonder, is there anyone who doesn’t personally know or know of someone who has developed dementia and/or Alzheimer’s disease?
It is a cruel disease and probably hardest on the family for figuring out how to deal with it. Old age is definitely not for sissies :). We always knew it but then we get here and suddenly it's our turn to go through it.
ReplyDeleteHope you are having a good Easter.
You are so right. I have known several to suffer this dreaded disease. It is so hard on the caregivers. I love the idea of the warm hug. Wouldn't hurt to make one for the caregivers also. They need one too.
ReplyDeleteBy the time my mum died two years ago, she had dramatically declined both mentally and physically and the outside world was becoming more and more of a mystery to her. If she was alive today, I doubt if she would have understood what this emergency was all about. It's very sad that she didn't leave us a decade earlier, when all her faculties were still intact and she was still enjoying life to the full.
ReplyDeleteCan appreciate you would want to have spared your mum the trauma of going through gradual memory loss, not to mention how family would be affected.
DeleteMy mother is living with Alzheimer's. She was diagnosed about a year ago. What hurts most is how it has begun to change her personality and reframe her memories. She recognizes everyone, but she has lost all her empathy and warmth. She only remembers things from her own childhood and early life. Our childhoods have been erased. It is very difficult for all of us who care for her to relate to this person who is slowly becoming a stranger.
ReplyDeletePersonality changes, even slight ones, can really impact relationships. Alzheimer’s is especially guilty of doing this, but often many brain alterations can cause an individual to become a different person as I saw in my work including some strokes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, brain injury and more. Insidious loss of memory has to be heart breaking to loved ones.
DeleteThey call it, "the long goodbye". It is an insidious disease. You never know what is going to take and what will be left. I knew a woman who didn't recognise her children but could still play bridge.
ReplyDeleteMy own mother is slowly losing her once sharp sens of reason. She isn't in a care facility yet but that is the next step . . .or next battle. Who knows how that will go.
Wish your mother was not having to go through functional decline as you describe. Am sure it's difficult for her and you, too. I hope the complications that can occur with this process are ideally none, but few for you at worst.
DeleteThanks for stopping by -- enjoy reading your gardening accounts from Scotland -- a countryside I've longed to visit in person.
My mother was 94 when she died. She never had dementia but a strange thing happened. She was always a sweet and very likeable person but when she was 92 (and in a nursing home) her personality changed completely. She was so nasty and hard to control that she had to be tied down. In hind sight I think it must have been due to medication that she had not taken before. Anyway … that lasted a year and then, almost overnight, she returned to her lovely self. The only problem was that she no longer knew any of us … her immediate family. She would always thank me if I took her for a wheelchair ride and say something like … "thank you. you are a sweet lady." It broke my heart that she had no idea who I was but I was glad that she was at peace.
ReplyDeleteMeds can alter people’s behavior. Also, there can be subtle changes in brain function for other reasons. Such a dramatic behavioral change would be hard to accept as was her later failure to know family. I wish you hadn’t had to experience that difficult situation.
DeleteI had a friend, now deceased, an only child whose mother failed to recognize her. In fact, she thought her daughter’s husband was her own and her own daughter was “the other woman” attempting to destroy her marriage.
I was the full time caregiver for my late wife who developed dementia post multiple cerebral and cardiac infarcts and have first hand experience of how it can affect a person and also the caregiver. We were more or less joined at the hips for nine years before she was spared further suffering but those nine years changed me.
ReplyDeleteI expect that would have been a real challenge with an altered relationship. No doubt the change you experienced may have had both positive and negative long term effects when viewed in retrospect — not necessarily recognized when living them. Regret you and your wife had your lives so upended.
DeleteI am witnessing it currently in one of my best and closest friends and my heart breaks. She clings to texting me but her memory is just about wiped, our memories.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to look into this shawl business as I currently make them for friends and put their life stories on them.
XO
WWW
Must be really heart-breaking to experience with your friend. Your shawls with friends life stories sound quite unique and especially meaningful to all, especially once their life story may have slipped the friend’s mind.
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