The NYT’s story of the Support Sunny Group (SSG) is a hopeful tale of a group of friends deciding not to let their own fears or the routine of friendship stop them from being there for each other. Too often I hear people say “it’s just to hard to be around him.” “It’s so hard to see her this way – I just can’t go.” And that is how (so simply, so gradually, so quietly) people with dementia lose their most valuable remaining thing – their circle of friends. Friendship changes with dementia for sure. But it can continue to yield gifts to both people. Susan and John McFadden’s book Aging Together explores the beauty of friendship and community in dementia in more detail.
Loving someone with dementia can bring about the adventure of getting to know another layer of their personhood. As professionals, we often get to know a side the family does not yet know. What a wonderful conversation between loved ones and staff when we can tell both sides of the story.
Even more wonderful when loved ones can find joy in uncovering the hidden layer.
Hello, as usual your eloquence, kindness, and empathy with those with whom you work is revealed. It is not “the person” out of lots of persons who needs the enabling support to meet their own needs for friends, companions, love, and support – it is a single individual. I fear/know that words like “them, residents,. persons living with dementia, stage two, etc. deindividualize us, at the same time we are collectivized under a new term – which masks us as individuals. When folks stumble across our unique humanity, our spirit, our essense they are most always impressed and amazed at having connected with us, if even for only a sentence or two. Instead of all stereotypes falling, they are momentarily cracked, only to reseal themselves as others move on to others of us.
It is so frustrating to watch, and even more disappointing for it to happen to us. We too seek the nectar which comes from conversation with a good friend, someone who not only genuinely cares about us but also empasizes with us. Tis no wonder we withdraw into a friendless world when confronted with the possibility of one minute friends, one hour of feeling good about our selves then off to your empty rooms, to await the next psychosocial intervention.
The goal of these interchanges should always be measured by one individual at time, one feeling at time, and one follow through plan to build on that event and feeling. Too many are satisfied with a “group high” lasting no more than an hour. The “glow” stays with the leaders for days and weeks. It motivates them to do more. The “glow stays with the participants until it dies for lack of a second, a plan, a reinforcement, a moment of planned and enabled personal growth.
This is what I believe. Richard