The Beauty of Remembering

Remembering a Lovely Moment with my Granddaughter - Photo by Kareen King

I recently attended a training workshop for Kansas Teaching Artists, Arts and Senior Service Organizations as part of the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission’s “Kansas Creative Aging Project”. During a storytelling activity, we were asked to make statements that began with “I remember.” I loved the creative potential included in this reminiscence activity and decided to incorporate it in my most recent weekly creative engagement program known to the residents I serve as “Kareen’s Kettle.”

The topic of the recent program was Amelia Earhart in light of her July 24th birthday. In preparation, I pored through Amelia’s biographical information and constructed some “I remember” statements from her childhood experiences including:

• I remember climbing trees.

• I remember hunting rats with a .22 rifle.

• I remember “belly-slamming” my sled downhill.

• I remember collecting worms, katydids and tree toads.

• I remember making a homemade roller coaster by attaching a ramp to a family tool shed.

• I remember seeing an aircraft for the first time at the age of ten at the Iowa State Fair.

• I remember my sister and I wearing bloomers when others girls didn’t.

• I remember spending countless hours reading books in my large family library.

• I remember being broken-hearted after watching my childhood home and all of its contents being auctioned off.

• I remember keeping a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women.

I recited the statements, hoping to jog a few memories, and then invited the participants to come up with snapshots from their own lives. I was pleased with their answers which are as follows:

I remember . . .

• Climbing a tree.

• Learning how to roller skate.

• The statement, “The war is over!”

• Trying to keep my sisters from fighting, and then all three of us getting into trouble.

• Sitting by the radio listening to fireside chats with Roosevelt and hearing him say, “This day will go down in infamy.”

• Getting upset when my brothers would run off after I hid during a game of hide-and-seek.

• Mom’s angel food cake.

• My parents kissing before they went to work.

• My disbelief in hearing my brother say, “Marilyn Monroe was at our store today,” only to discover it was true, and that he added, “She used our bathroom and we were gonna lock the door!”

• The 4-H fairs.

• Living in South Dakota.

• A tornado striking my parents’ farm.

• The 1966 tornado and the 1951 flood.

• Running around.

• School days.

• Going uptown to see the movies.

• My wedding day – it snowed.

• Sliding down steep hills.

• Playing lots of softball.

• Climbing mulberry trees and eating the mulberries.

• Taking my father up a steep hill on a bicycle, and he was a big man!

• Nothing.

The crowning moment during one of the gatherings occurred when we heard an enthusiastic declaration from a woman who chose to sit in the back, outside our circle: “Getting drunk! I was slipping drinks, and this man’s drink was loaded!”

I recently learned that the memories that stick with us the longest are those that are attached to strong emotions. This was evidenced in particular by one woman’s tears at the end of one of my programs while I sang our usual closing song, “Happy Trails.” When I was finished, I reminded everyone that we needed to get up and go so that we could have enough time to set up the dining room for lunch.

“What if we don’t want to go?” the teary-eyed woman replied.

And that’s when you know what you’re doing is making a difference.

How Dr. Seuss Evoked Reminiscence and Ignited Imagination with Older Adults

The life and works of Dr. Seuss provide a wealth of potential creative engagement material to work from in the long-term care setting. Until a few weeks ago, my appreciation of Dr. Seuss was superficial at best - recalling childhood memories of falling to sleep while listening to the contagious yawns in the recording of “Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book,” hearing my parents read “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back” to me, and even giving out copies of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” as graduation gifts while raising children of my own.

While preparing for my “Dr. Seuss Experience,” I paid a visit to my octogenarian in-laws. I shared some of my ideas with them, soliciting their advice for what to do with the wisdom-filled “Oh the Places You’ll Go.” I wasn’t really sure, for example, whether facilitating a discussion on the places nursing home residents want to go to would be very fruitful. Perhaps it might even be depressing. Would a reminiscence discussion be preferable? I wanted their input, especially in light of a farm accident that left my father-in-law dependent on the care of others over the previous several years.

“Well, if you were to ask, ‘Where do you want to go?’” my mother-in-law responded, “The answer would probably be, ‘Do you want to go to this room, or to this room?’ So, it would probably be better to ask where they’ve been.”

That triggered a delightful conversation with my in-laws on the places they’ve been, several of which I never knew about. We all ended the afternoon a little brighter as a result.

So, I applied their wisdom when I facilitated fun-filled experiences with three groups of residents in three different living environments. The experience at Brookside Retirement Community was especially animated with different individuals spontaneously breaking out into songs such as “Kansas City” and “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning . . .” during our “Where have you been?” discussion.

Songs like “I’ve Been Everywhere” and “Oh Where Have You Been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy” led to more lively discussion as we filled up the dry erase board with places they’ve been. One lady with dementia said, “I came from outer space,” adding a little twirl with her finger upside her head as she poked fun at herself.

The crowning moment came at the end when a male resident exclaimed, “I haven’t gone to the moon yet.”

“Let’s go now!” I shouted, leading everyone in a collective “popcorn” game of “Yes And!”

With that, we all took an imaginary journey to the moon where we saw Jupiter, Mars, John Glenn, and even drank beer there.

“I’m gonna find a man up there,” another lady with dementia teased.

“The man’s dead,” rebuffed a crotchety gentlemen.

Nevertheless, everyone had a delightful time.

“Has everyone’s spirits gone up a notch? If so, raise your hand,” I invited.

Hands rose all around the room.

“This always helps,” one of the female residents concluded.

Later, I visited my in-laws with a report on the experience.

 “I figured they’d rather go backward than forward,” my mother-in-law concluded.

And yet, though there was joy in reminiscing, there’s nothing that stops us from moving forward in our imaginations.

My Mother-in-Law, Wanda - Photo by Kareen King

How Creative Enrichment Took a Brain from Zero to Ten

As per customary routine, I went up and down the halls of the Assisted Living to invite the residents to Kareen’s Kettle. When I entered John’s room, he was watching the news while seated in a recliner, his body shifted far to the right and head leaning over the arm of the chair. Concerned, I asked, “Are you o.k.?”

He looked confused, mumbling that he was o.k. I soon realized he thought I wasn’t coming until the afternoon because of a glitch in the calendar.

“Are you sure you’re o.k?” I persisted.

“I don’t feel that good,” he replied.

I reported his condition to the nurse who said she’d check in on him. No sooner had I finished the conversation than I saw John headed with his walker straight to his regular seat in the large semi-circle of older adults where they faced a large picture of the brain I had drawn on the dry erase board.

I scanned the faces of my participants and quickly surmised an unusual lethargy in the space.

“O.k., ladies and gentlemen, on a scale of one to ten, ten being terrific, and one being terrible, what’s your number?”

With the exception of two people, numbers ranged from four to eight, with most being around a five. John was a zero.

Armed with this information, I mustered my best energy to guide them through our usual warm-up routine comprised of breathing and chair exercises, sung to their favorite tunes. Our topic of the day was the brain. And I was lucky that the charge nurse was willing to serve as an improvisational mind reader at a moment’s notice.

After reviewing the four lobes of the brain, I invited Linda to produce her magic. One by one, she moved from person to person with great gusto and humor, ruffling up the men’s hair as she came up with the perfect insight for each individual. By the end of the exercise, I had laughed so much, my face hurt. Linda had raised the energy level from zero to a hundred in just a few minutes.

The remainder of our time was spent discussing how our brain thinks, imagines, ponders, meditates, contemplates, wonders, deliberates, believes, reflects, and remembers. I told them the story of a resident named Tom who came to Brookside long ago with a traumatic brain injury which affected his personality. His song, “Yuk, Yuk, Yuk” is featured in my album, “The Person in the Picture Ain’t Me.” We discussed how Albert Einstein said that imagination is more important than intelligence. And I had the housekeeper, Lisa bring in a box for them to guess what was in it. Turns out it was empty, but it was a great catalyst for us to discuss what it is to think outside the box.

In the end, using the Glen Campbell song, “Gentle on my Mind” as a catalyst, I encouraged them to be gentle with themselves. After all, they all have a lot of memories and information stored inside their brains – it’s no wonder it’s difficult to retrieve everything. I also encouraged them to continue to come to the Kettle, as it’s a great place to stretch their imagination and learn new things – all great for brain health. Life is a series of adjustments to losses and disappointments, and coming together for creative enrichment is a great thing to do to strengthen the brain, and ultimately the spirit.

After our final song, “Happy Trails,” I went from person to person to shake their hands and thank them for coming. When I came to John, I asked, “So, you showed up with a zero. Did our experience raise you at least one notch?”

“Oh,” he shook his head with a huge grin, “It took it from a zero to a ten!”