| Billy Collins, America’s former Poet Laureate, offers us poetry that is not only brilliant but accessible. As caregivers consider how poetry can enrich their lives, they may look to the example (below) of his poignant insight and consider how poetry can enrich and inform the lives of caregivers who, in this case, may be looking after those who have forgotten key things in their lives – the names of their children, their own name, what happened five minutes ago… |
| The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor |
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Collins’ charming and heartbreaking poem touches the way we perceive life. Our memory informs so much of our being that we can’t imagine being without out, much less gradually beginning to lose it.
Caregivers who look after Alzheimer’s patients encounter, every day, the strange images of 
perfectly normal looking human beings who can’t recall what happened five minutes ago. If you’ve been close to someone who has experienced this hard reality, you have a sense for the challenge caregivers face.
Years ago, my late mother-in-law, who had looked after her stroke-ridden husband faithfully for many years, traveled the tortuous descent into the painful valley of Alzheimers. A lifelong lover of literature and drama, and a saintly person in so many ways, the disease gradually captured not only her memory, but began to steal her personality as well.
The process can leave us wondering who we are.
Landmark studies by Drs. Ronald and Jan Glaser at Ohio State University have demonstrated the enormous stress caregivers face. Especially family members who may be engaged in round-the-clock care. The Glasers have demonstrated that stressed caregivers suffer from increased physical illness and that they recover more slowly from injuries.
A small number of quality respite programs around the country recognize and treat this problem by offering relief to caregivers. In light of the rising population of elderly, our country needs to recognize the dramatic need for respite care and the need for significant funding of these programs.
Meanwhile, if you know a caregiver who’s taken the responsibility to look after a patient with dementia, or anyone else who’s house bound, today is an opportunity to begin offering help, and the respite our love can bring, before we become the ones who "forget."
Journal of Sacred Work 
Leave a comment