Reflections on Dementia

I had an uptick this week in memory issues, which coincided with the week I was getting  tax stuff to our preparer.  These memory issues have been the kind where I’ve been thinking about one thing and then I lose track of what I was thinking about.  I know this happens to everyone now and then; it’s the increasing frequency of “senior moments” which distinguishes dementia from the “normal” patterns of behavior.  More specifically, dementia attacks the most recent memories first, leaving older memories virtually intact until much later in the dementia’s progression.

But, I knuckled down and got everything in, and now we wait to hear the amount we owe.  Hopefully, our preparer will work some magic and lower our pain level just a bit.  At least, that’s what I’m praying for these next few days, when I remember to do so.  It comforts to know that Jesus and family also had to pay their taxes way back when, its a very old tradition.

Thankfully, my friend Rick was in town for a few days this week, and we had lunch at Jason’s Deli.  He confessed to his addiction to their strawberry shortcake, and of course I had to try it.  Now I’m addicted too.  Why is it now that I can’t forget the strawberry shortcake, just like everything else?

Our dogs have what’s been called “selective memory”.  They are experts at knowing exactly when the treats come out.  If we forget to dispense them, they politely remind us to do so.  Okay, not so politely.  They even lead us to the kitchen and point out out where they are.  But try to teach them “tricks” and they’re not the least bit interested.  They quickly find their favorite spot and catch some Z’s.

Memory is a strange thing.  As a priest, I can remember many Bible verses like I learned them yesterday.  But ask me where I put my glasses, and I’ll be searching for a while.  I can meet a person, and within a minute forget their name.  But I can remember people I went to school with, folks I haven’t seen in fifty years and it’s like I saw them yesterday.

My friend Rick asked me how I was feeling, and I just said this: “It’s taking a lot of medication just to be the way I am.”  And it takes some doing for me to remember to take my meds.  But I have Cookie to remind me, and she does that very well.  Thank y’all for reading, it really means a lot.

Blessings,

Father Dave

 

 

Well, there you have it.  Once again, the children have to take some action because the grown-ups won’t.  Our children have to grow up fast these days, because they’ve quickly realizing that the “system” isn’t working.  They know, as youngsters, that they are in the cross-hairs of the violence of this nation.

Thank God, once again, the kids are marching.  I say, let them march.  Let them learn the trials and workings of democracy.  Let them learn that to change things, they have to speak in unison.  Change is hard, and those who control the status quo aren’t wanting you out there marching.  “Let the adults handle things, after all, we know what’s best for you.”

Let me say that I, for one, am very proud of what you’re doing.  You will learn more about yourselves on your marches than you’ll ever learn in school.  Education is an important thing, but it comes in many packages.  You didn’t create this mess, but you have become the targets.  I believe that together, you have the ability to fix it.  If you don’t, your children will be dealing with the same things you are.

I also know that the grown-ups will try to stop you from your marching.  They will threaten you with punishment and cast doubts about your future.  The shootings will be labeled an “isolated incident”, and added to the ever-growing list of carnage.  And you’ll be left to wonder if the next school shooting will be yours.

If my children were in school today, I would hope that they’d be marching.  I would pray that they’d be challenging the grown-ups to do something to make it stop.  I would hope that they’d insist their schools and teachers get better funding.  I would hope they would ask that their teachers could concentrate on teaching, rather than thinking about their guns.

As a former police officer, let me tell you something about having guns.  In my twenty years of policing, there were a number of misfires.  Not just citizen misfires, but officer misfires.  They happened on the shooting range, and they happened in the City-County basement where we parked the squad cars.  They happened to some of the most competent officers I worked with.  Fatigue from working long hours around the clock were certainly a factor.  I myself once pointed a loaded gun at a fellow officer in a training exercise.  These things happen, and they will happen in your schools.  In the news this week there was a story of an officer who left his gun unattended in a school room.  These things will happen.

So I say to y’all, march.  March for those who are no longer with us.  March for the children who have been traumatized.  March for the teachers in your schools who are so poorly compensated.  March, because if you don’t, nothing will happen.  You must take courage, and work together for change, because you are your only hope.  And be assured that I and many others will be praying for you.

Blessings,

Father Dave

 

Well, there you have it.  Once again, the children have to take some action because the grown-ups won’t.  Our children have to grow up fast these days, because they’ve quickly realizing that the “system” isn’t working.  They know, as youngsters, that they are in the cross-hairs of the violence of this nation.

Thank God, once again, the kids are marching.  I say, let them march.  Let them learn the trials and workings of democracy.  Let them learn that to change things, they have to speak in unison.  Change is hard, and those who control the status quo aren’t wanting you out there marching.  “Let the adults handle things, after all, we know what’s best for you.”

Let me say that I, for one, am very proud of what you’re doing.  You will learn more about yourselves on your marches than you’ll ever learn in school.  Education is an important thing, but it comes in many packages.  You didn’t create this mess, but you have become the targets.  I believe that together, you have the ability to fix it.  If you don’t, your children will be dealing with the same things you are.

I also know that the grown-ups will try to stop you from your marching.  They will threaten you with punishment and cast doubts about your future.  The shootings will be labeled an “isolated incident”, and added to the ever-growing list of carnage.  And you’ll be left to wonder if the next school shooting will be yours.

If my children were in school today, I would hope that they’d be marching.  I would pray that they’d be challenging the grown-ups to do something to make it stop.  I would hope that they’d insist their schools and teachers get better funding.  I would hope they would ask that their teachers could concentrate on teaching, rather than thinking about their guns.

As a former police officer, let me tell you something about having guns.  In my twenty years of policing, there were a number of misfires.  Not just citizen misfires, but officer misfires.  They happened on the shooting range, and they happened in the City-County basement where we parked the squad cars.  They happened to some of the most competent officers I worked with.  Fatigue from working long hours around the clock were certainly a factor.  I myself once pointed a loaded gun at a fellow officer in a training exercise.  These things happen, and they will happen in your schools.  In the news this week there was a story of an officer who left his gun unattended in a school room.  These things will happen.

So I say to y’all, march.  March for those who are no longer with us.  March for the children who have been traumatized.  March for the teachers in your schools who are so poorly compensated.  March, because if you don’t, nothing will happen.  You must take courage, and work together for change, because you are your only hope.  And be assured that I and many others will be praying for you.

Blessings,

Father Dave

 

Well, there you have it.  Once again, the children have to take some action because the grown-ups won’t.  Our children have to grow up fast these days, because they’ve quickly realizing that the “system” isn’t working.  They know, as youngsters, that they are in the cross-hairs of the violence of this nation.

Thank God, once again, the kids are marching.  I say, let them march.  Let them learn the trials and workings of democracy.  Let them learn that to change things, they have to speak in unison.  Change is hard, and those who control the status quo aren’t wanting you out there marching.  “Let the adults handle things, after all, we know what’s best for you.”

Let me say that I, for one, am very proud of what you’re doing.  You will learn more about yourselves on your marches than you’ll ever learn in school.  Education is an important thing, but it comes in many packages.  You didn’t create this mess, but you have become the targets.  I believe that together, you have the ability to fix it.  If you don’t, your children will be dealing with the same things you are.

I also know that the grown-ups will try to stop you from your marching.  They will threaten you with punishment and cast doubts about your future.  The shootings will be labeled an “isolated incident”, and added to the ever-growing list of carnage.  And you’ll be left to wonder if the next school shooting will be yours.

If my children were in school today, I would hope that they’d be marching.  I would pray that they’d be challenging the grown-ups to do something to make it stop.  I would hope that they’d insist their schools and teachers get better funding.  I would hope they would ask that their teachers could concentrate on teaching, rather than thinking about their guns.

As a former police officer, let me tell you something about having guns.  In my twenty years of policing, there were a number of misfires.  Not just citizen misfires, but officer misfires.  They happened on the shooting range, and they happened in the City-County basement where we parked the squad cars.  They happened to some of the most competent officers I worked with.  Fatigue from working long hours around the clock were certainly a factor.  I myself once pointed a loaded gun at a fellow officer in a training exercise.  These things happen, and they will happen in your schools.  In the news this week there was a story of an officer who left his gun unattended in a school room.  These things will happen.

So I say to y’all, march.  March for those who are no longer with us.  March for the children who have been traumatized.  March for the teachers in your schools who are so poorly compensated.  March, because if you don’t, nothing will happen.  You must take courage, and work together for change, because you are your only hope.  And be assured that I and many others will be praying for you.

Blessings,

Father Dave

 

I’ve been watching this bad boy grow on my walk each day.  It grows in the seam between sidewalk and curb, and does so in the midst of a drought.  This particular plant is about two feet high and easily that wide.  Despite the lack of moisture, its flowers are blooming.  Later on in the year, it will break loose from it’s roots and turn into the venerable tumbleweed.  As it rolls across the Texas landscape, driven by the prevailing winds, it will leave its seeds along the way.  It is the ultimate model of efficiency.  And, it’ll be filled with thorns, which is why people encourage them to keep them on rolling.

There’s that old saying, “Bloom where you’re planted”.  The humble tumbleweed does just that.  It doesn’t complain about where it ends up; when it gets there, it just blooms, and keeps the cycle rolling.  From the steppes of Russia to the southwestern United States, the Tumbleweed blooms wherever its planted, the ultimate road warrior you don’t want to mess with.

I suspect we’ve all been planted in some nasty place, at one time or another.  We don’t always get to choose where it is we’re planted.  At times, we can’t understand why such things happen to us.  Blooming is the last thing we want to do in those places.  But as the humble Tumbleweed illustrates, where we’re planted is, well, right where we are.

My sense is that the great religious leaders of our world understood this.  They realized that every place was holy, and yet had its own baggage.  Rather then wandering from one place to another, they put down strong roots and learned to live in the moment.  We call them Saints because they stayed planted.  They were nourished by the power of faith.  The same faith awaits us, if we choose to bloom where we’re planted.

Sometimes we just have to trust in the moment.  I don’t why I ended up with dementia.  I’ll probably never know, but it doesn’t change things.  I’ve decided to live like the  tumbleweed, and to bloom where I’m planted.  I figure that’s enough for each day.  I’ll keep an eye on the tumbleweed’s progress and when it moves, I’ll get out of the way.

The world only gets better when we bloom where we’re planted.  And we can bloom, even in the absence of light.  We can become the light of the world.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  Bloom wherever it is you’ve been planted.   The need has never been greater.

Blessings,

Fr Dave

For the first time in many, many years, Cookie and I are going to be a one car family.  We are getting ready to sell Cookie’s red Toyota Camry.  Since we’re both retired now, we have one car too many, and with my dementia, I won’t need a car anyway.  Still, it’s a shock to one’s system to have make that decision.  Having grown up in Detroit, “The Motor City” as they say, I wanted to grab a car as fast as I could.  Needless to say, I wasn’t at all picky.  Gas, as I recall it back when I turned sixteen in 1967, was a sweet 20 cents a gallon, and they pumped it for you.  Eat your heart out, teenagers of today!

When my Grandfather passed, my parents inherited his gray Ford Fairlane, since my Grandma had never learned how to drive.  My older brothers drove it for a while, and then it passed to me, being next in line.  It was a great car while it lasted; not the most beautiful car to come off the assembly line, but I was glad to have it.  Unfortunately it died of old age, spewing a dense cloud of white-gray smoke behind it as I drove it home from work one day.

I suspect we all have old car stories to tell, being such a mobile society.  I confess, I’m kind of old school, and I’ve come to dislike all the technical doodads that today’s cars all seem to come with.  Wouldn’t you know it, we decided to sell the Toyota because my Buick Regal has heated seats that Cookie has fallen in love with.

Cookie grumbles about the way I drive, frequently telling me, “You drive like a cop”.  Having driven police cars for so many years in Wisconsin, in all kinds of weather, makes it’s hard for me to do otherwise.  But I know the time is coming when I’ll have to give up my keys, and let her do all the driving.  I feel some sadness about that, but on the other hand, I’ve also seen what drivers with dementia can do.  If you know someone in that situation, please, please take control of their keys.

So, Cookie and I have paid off the Toyota and have a clear title.  It’s a 2015 with less than 20,000 miles.  It was driven back and forth to church by a lovely, wonderful woman, albeit on the cautious side   We hope it will find a very good home, here in the great State of Texas.

There’s that old Joni Mitchell song that goes, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”  Carpus Diem everyone.  Carpus Diem…

 

 

 

 

I am happy to report that our bedroom window has finally been replaced!  It was broken out by the massive hail storm last summer, along with a number of other windows in our complex.  This morning, we finally have a wonderful, panoramic view of our commons area, instead of plywood!  And, I’m noting all of this, of course, using Windows 10.

The events in our nation this past week have opened many windows.  Windows into the vulnerability of our schools, our teachers and especially our children; the disparate positions concerning the regulation of gun ownership; and the failure of our government to keep guns out of our many school buildings.  But perhaps the worst window it has opened is the lack of planning that has allowed the shootings to continue in the school buildings of our nation.  For this, I lay the blame squarely on our government.

For many years, our schools have been neglected.  Teachers underpaid, lean budgets, a lack of money for security enhancements, and especially for professional counselors for the many troubled kids in schools across the nation.  None of this is new; my parents were both teachers in the Detroit area, and I clearly remember the gutted budgets and my Dad occasionally having to wrestle some kids to the office.

I don’t blame the teachers.  Nor do I blame the kids.  I blame the people who control the school funding.  The education of our kids reflects who we are, or who we should be as a nation.  To have our President suggest that we arm our teachers is the result of a lack of education.

I hope the windows being opened now will show just where the problems are.  As St. Paul said so eloquently in the Scriptures, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult I put an end to childish ways.”  May we move beyond the rhetoric and end our childish ways.

Blessings,

Fr Dave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have Dementia.  I truly believe I could walk into any gun shop and buy a weapon.  Think about that.  I suppose some of you might think, “how is that possible?  Do I really want a guy with dementia walking around with a gun?  A guy with memory lapses, who sometimes forgets where he leaves things?  Yet, that what its come to in this country.  Think about that, as we all await the next shooting to take place.  You know it won’t be long.

The medication I take for Dementia is powerful stuff.  Believe me when I say that.  But it’s nothing compared to the meds that other folks out there use on a regular basis.  And yet, they continue to be able to both buy, and own weapons.  We’ve made it a convenience in this country.  Like going to the Supermarket.  The right to bear arms sounds so wonderful, until the next bloodbath, and we go through the same cycle again.  My father was a teacher in the City of Detroit for many, many years and he never had to encounter a  weapon.  The times certainly have changed, and not for the better.

I spent twenty years as a police officer.  When I retired, I got rid of my guns.  I trusted, and I continue to trust the officers who work on our streets.  I know they’ve been back-grounded and they’ve had extensive training on both using and storing their weapons.  I just can’t say that about the guy down the street.  Look no further than the shootings in Florida.

You may call me demented, but I don’t much care anymore about the right to bear arms.  The blood of the dead children and teachers, have long since washed that away.  We’re  not living in a John Wayne movie, and hopefully, we’re way past playing Cowboys and Indians.  Our country is changing and not for the better.  As much as I’d like to just pray the problem away, I really believe the Lord wants to see me/us in action.  The clock is ticking; what are y’all willing to do?

Blessings,

Father Dave

 

 

No matter what malady I’ve had over the years, (and I’ve had plenty), every doctor always mentions four words: “You need to exercise.”   I’ve come to believe that the most muscle-toned model of personal fitness could walk into any doctor’s office and hear those exact words; “You need more exercise.”  Even when my exercising contributed to the malady in question, I was told, “You need more exercise-but don’t overdo it!”

Now, I do like to exercise, don’t get me wrong.  I use to run, but my knees protest too much when I do.  I’ve turned to taking long walks each day and lifting some weights.  I am in a long and costly battle to maintain my waistline and the causalities have been many.  My doctors keep after me to exercise, but they’re all younger than me.  They haven’t learned yet what gravity can do to a person!

Lately I’ve been thinking about the coming of summer.  During the fall, and into the winter, I’ve been walking during the afternoon hours.  But it won’t be long and we’ll be into the heat of the summer, here in Texas.  There’s no way I’ll be able to walk in that heat.  They’d find me on the sidewalk, a withered and desiccated old man.  Or perhaps the blessed sand of the Permian Basin would just cover me over!

The problem is that I like to move slowly when I get up in the morning.  I have my routine; coffee, TV news, Cookie, dogs, meds, breakfast, and all of a sudden it’s noon or later!  Walking in the morning before it gets hot will put a sizable crimp in my schedule. Of course there are a couple of other options.  I could just give up the exercise, but my Doctor would catch on pretty fast.  After all, when I arrive at the office, the first thing they do is weigh me!  And speaking of that, why does their scale always make me heavier than the one I use at home?  What’s up with that?

I could also join a health club, and walk in the air conditioned comfort such places provide.  But then I have to pay for my exercise.  Somehow that seems incredibly wrong.  Call me cheap, but I’m not paying for exercise, nor am I paying for pain.  That’s something I can do to myself.

What a conundrum.  It appears the best option is get up before dawn and to hope for the best.  Or, I suppose I could become a professional mall-walker, but that would aggravate my aversion to shopping.  How in the world did my life get so complicated?  I haven’t made a decision yet, and I’m already worn out.  What would Jesus do?  I suppose he’d probably call on his disciple, the physician Luke.  I doubt Luke ever weighed the Son of God, but he did join him on his walks.  Hmmmm.

Sometimes you feel like a nut…sometimes you don’t

This past Tuesday I put on my clerical garb for the first time since I retired from St. Nicholas Episcopal Church back in July of 2017.  It’s hard to believe the time has passed so quickly.  In doing so, I discovered that my pants were a lot tighter on me than they were when I’d retired.  I had to kind of scrunch myself into them, by taking a deep breath or two; It was at that moment that the diet light started flashing on and off in my brain.

In my last blog I mentioned that Cookie and I were traveling to Abilene to attend my friend and former student Karen’s ordination as a Deacon.  As I thought about what to take with me, I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to wear, robe-wise, to the event.  This was rather disconcerting, as I had been to a number of ordinations in the past.  Rather than leave things to chance, I texted my friend Father Jim up in Lubbock, and he graciously provided me with the list of appropriate attire.

It was a beautiful service, and I am so glad we were able to attend.  Cookie was the designated driver, considering the distance we had to travel.  It wasn’t really a long way in Texas miles, but it was long enough for me to need a chauffeur.  My world is starting to shrink a bit, as a result of the dementia.  No matter, we had a lovely time, and got to catch up with lots of folks.  I was one of the presenters, which was a great honor.  There is nothing like an Episcopal ordination!

We stayed overnight at one of the local Marriott’s in Abilene, a very nice place.  We were in the car getting ready to head out on Wednesday, when I realized I had left my Kindle Reader in the hotel room.  I headed back to the front desk with a sigh, and was graciously given a new room key; I then successfully retrieved said Kindle.  Never a dull moment with dementia, everyday’s an adventure.

The increase in the frequency of these “senior moments” prompted my doc to up my daily dose of Memantine, adding a “patch” to go with the pills I take each day.  Hopefully, this will slow down the recent increase in the senior moments I’ve been experiencing.  It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in my life when I didn’t take medication.  Ah, for those good old days!

In the Biblical book of Sirach (Apocrypha), these words are written; “Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; and those who fear the Lord will find them.”  I am so grateful to all of you who are traveling with me on this journey.

Blessings,

Fr Dave