Day: January 26, 2018

For some months now,working at the Mansion,  I’ve seen the pain, loss of dignity and self-respect that can sometimes come along with aging. One of the most painful things the residents ever  tell me is that they can no longer read. I see pain and shame in their faces and voices.

Researchers have long argued that reading is vital to the elderly, and that not enough is being done to keep older people from losing the ability to read, especially those with memory decline. I often read to the Mansion residents, and sometimes they read to me, and it is wrenching to see them struggle to keep reading and following stories.

One of the frustrations for nurses, aides, doctors and caretakers is that there are few if any books written just for them, and I think that has just changed.

Reading is believed to slow down diseases like dementia, it can be calming and fend off boredom, depression and anxiety. I’ve seen that loneliness is much more acute when people can’t read, they have few ways to step out of themselves and into other, lost worlds. They are painfully aware of something very important to a human being’s life.

When the elderly engage with a book in some way, say gerontologists, they enhance self-image and renew a sense of self-respect and belonging. The can re-kindle memory, autonomy, conversation and the process of stimulation. They have something to share with the people around them.

When people tell me they can no longer read, they look weary, sad and resigned in a particular way that speaks to one’s sense of self and hope  As if they had already left a part of the world. Giving up reading is a profound disconnection from the ordinary world, it separates them from us in a way they sense and we see very clearly.

I’ve found some wonderful books that give me hope that reading can be re-kindle, that it is possible to revive minds and strengthen voices. I’ve found a company called reading2connect founded by doctors and psychologists that creates books for seniors with memory challenges.

The company was called to my attention by a Connecticut librarian who works with the elderly and speaks highly of these new books. These may be the first books ever written for people in memory decline.

Our books,” their site says, “are highly readable, yet retain the integrity of adult literature.” That would be miraculous.

There is sometimes a sense of insolation I feels at the Mansion, despite all of the outings and activities there. The residents are alone with their own minds and consciousness for much of the day, and when they can no longer read, they are more alone than ever and more dramatically cut off from everything that is familiar with them.

I’ve ordered three of these books for $124, they will be arriving shortly, and I’ve asked the Mansion residents who would like to read with me in one-on-one classes starting next month. I’ve got six students already. They say they  would love to try to read again. Some say it’s impossible for them.

I hand out books all the time at the Mansion to those who can still read, and I’d love to work with them as well to strengthen their memory and focus, perhaps even to revive reading skills. Reading, say psychologists, is a skill that is generally preserved and intact int he procedural memory of an elderly person. Like  brushing teeth or using utensils,  the ability to read is automatic and often remains to some degree functional even in the later stages of dementia. If so, it could be reachable.

Books provide a platform for discussion and sharing in assisted care facilities. Book nurses and aides and caregivers new tools with which to connect to the people they are working with.  The caregivers gain also by reading with their patients and clients, they naturally become more invested and personal in their work.

I’ve purchased three volumes – one on birds, one on dogs, one on famous comedians. In cases of advanced memory loss, I will read to the residents, in other cases we can read to one another, or they can read to me. The books are constructed to reclaim memory, it is hard for me to imagine being able to read, but finding all of the print you see unreadable.

I’m excited to try this class, and grateful there is so much interest. I have taught  writing and also literacy, and i am coming to know the residents well, even those with acute memory issues. They may not know my name, but they know me and they know my dog. There is trust and affectionate between us. Whenever Joan, a resident with acute memory loss, sees me, she takes my hand in hers and puts it up to her lips and kisses it. “Thank you for coming here,” she says, even if she cannot know precisely what I am doing there.

So a new chapter in my work at the Mansion. I am not sure what I will find or what I will see or  teach. These books are the most interesting books I have come across in my search for books to bring to the Mansion that are tailored for them as they advance into the aging process and struggle to keep reading.

How wonderful to be able to help bring that back. Julie Smith, the Mansion Activities Director, has put up a sign-up sheet and is scheduling one-on-one reading sessions. Exciting new ground.

If you wish to support this or other work at the Mansion,,  you can donate to me and the Mansion fund by sending your contribution to Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or me via Paypal, [email protected].

There are two things my wife rarely does. One is spend money or buy new things. The other is go and see doctors. In our ten years today, Maria had her eyes checked once, and I had to drag her to the optometrist. The second time was a few weeks ago, when she got a new prescription for glasses. No rush to fill them, she announced, and I thought it would be a long time before those new glasses were ordered.

One night last week, when the screws finally fell right out of her battered old glasses and we spent a long time trying to get them back, I had the bright idea to tape the glasses together, and I could see that she loved the idea, I shot myself in the food because she would wear those taped glasses forever.

The optician gulped when he saw her old pair and took them back into a secret room to get rid of the scratches.

I made a big scene about it, and she reluctantly agreed to go to Bennington and order a new pair of glasses. She went, but not happily or quietly. Our opticians – the Moulton Spectacle Shoppe – were lovely and helpful and Maria found a pair of glasses she loved – the only pair in the whole shop (pe) that she loved.

They are also inexpensive. I got my glasses there for about $300 and her tonier ones cost about $380. Try doing that in New York City.

I make it a point to never stop at a shop called “shoppe,” but these people were  truly nice and helpful and knowledgeable.

We went and got them today. Maria was very happy. I never saw her so happy about buying something that cost more than $20.

The opticians and I agreed these were great (in fact, I took them off a shelf and showed them to her after watching her turn down about a hundred others, including a purple frame I liked.) She was – is – just delighted.

She carefully wrapped up her old lenses and put them in her jacket pocket, she plans on keeping them as a back-up pair. They will be with us a long time. Nothing ever gets thrown out here/

I was excited by these glasses, they not only looked great,  but there is a good chance she will stop driving my car onto various bone-ratting curbs. She seems not to see curbs.

Hallelujah, I may not live to see her buy another pair. I told the optician that this was a high water mark for he. He patted me on the shoulder and wishes me good luck. Maria too.

Sylvie has moved into Connie’s old room at the Mansion, and I think this still confuses Red, he sometimes looks around for Connie. The other week, Sylvie asked me if it would be possible to find a carpet for her room, for the space between her bed and the wall.

This, she said, was both for aesthetics and warmth. Sylvie gets cold, especially in her feet,  all year long.

I knew a friend in town was moving from her house into an apartment and I texted her and asked her if she had a carpet she was getting rid of. She did, and I went and got it and got it over to the Mansion. It fit perfectly, and Sylvie loves it.

People are always suggesting ways for me to make this work bigger – talk to colleges, non-profit associations, professional fund-raisers, credit unions, find colleges, corporate sponsors, billionaires and millionaires, hedge funds, banks.

My idea is not to get bigger, but to stay small. Even intimate.

I would not survive the paperwork and politics of the real non-profit world, which is every bit as cutthroat as Washington D.C., I am told. A path to frustration, meddling and burn out. i like what we have. We function on a small-scale. You get to see every person we help, and everything we help them with.

I get to see and know every person I help. And show their faces.

It is personal, intimate, not a giant bureaucracy giving money with strings attached, but a relatively small number of people – the Army Of Good – donating small amounts of money, committing small acts of great kindness. Thankfully, there are a lot of you.

it seems a natural impulse to get bigger and bigger, it is the American way,  my impulse to start out small and stay there. It is the little things that really matter – letters, cards, holiday decorations, air conditioners, carpets, soap and waterproof boots and shoes.

I don’t want my time taken up filling out forms, begging on the phone, listening to conditions, struggling with strings. I want to know people and find out the ways they can be help. We will never have enough money to make everyone’s dreams come true, we can help fulfill their needs and some of their dreams.

None of us are looking for a fight, or eager to start an argument. We are not here to perform miracles or alter fate, we are here to fill the small holes that can make so much of a difference in the lives of marginalized and ignored people.

Sylvie loves to get your letters, but many are returned. She says she returns the returned letters to prayers, she often gets the address or zip code wrong.

Sylvie is deeply religious, the Jehovah’s Witnesses.Someone suggested it might be helpful if your letters included stamped and self-addressed envelopes. It’s a good idea, she worries that people will get upset when they don’t hear from her, she loves her new friends. You can write Sylvia at The Mansion, 22 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Maria had a highly successful debut of her Mansion Art Class, which will be held one day a month at the Mansion.  The task today was to trace objects that had been cut out of drawing paper. The residents got into it – Barb, Joan, Julie Smith (Activities Director), Peggie, Mary  and Maria all drew from the cut outs. Lots of laughter, jokes, stories. Art brings focus and inspires the mind to think, it is really an exercise of the brain.

I assisted, we had a lot of laughs and some nice sketches. In a week or so I will start my one-on-one reading class, more later. Maria is a natural teacher, patient, clear, upbeat. Her infection for her art is contagious. Everybody was focused, working hard, into their work.

In her very beautiful poem “Flare” , from The Leaf And The Cloud, Mary Oliver writes about her mother:

“my mother, alas, alas, did not always love her life, heavier than iron it was, as she carried it in her arms, from room to room, oh, unforgettable!

And her father, who was, she wrote:

“a demon of frustrated dreams, was a breaker of trust, was a poor, thin boy with bad luck. He followed God, there being no one else he could talk to.”

And then, she wrote:

It is not a lack of love, nor lack of sorrow. 

But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

I give them – one, two, three, four – the kiss of courtesy, of sweet thanks, of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.

May they sleep well. May they soften.

But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.

I will not give them the responsibility for my life.

How beautiful these words, how often I have turned to them for comfort and soothing and  inspiration.

My mother did not always love her life either, and she carried that burning seed with her wherever she went.

My father never gloried in children he could love, and he could never really hide it or dance around it. He was ashamed. He followed the needy people who lived far away, and  tried to help them, there was no one in the house he could talk to, and so, he was never home.

Like so many people with broken parents and shattered families, i have learned to soften, I wish the same for them in their graves. I have gone to them in peace and introduced them to Maria and said I love you and forgive you,  it turned out well, I was happy, I found love, something neither of them ever could, and I had come to understand, as older people do, that they meant no harm, and did the best they could for as long as they could.

But I would not carry around the iron thing in my heart, I told them that.

My hardest and greatest lesson in my recent life has been to learn to take responsibility for my own life, it is the life I chose, and no one is responsible for it but me. For so many years, I gave it away, piece by piece,  I blamed my troubled life on everyone I knew.

My head was filled with rage and resentment, look what they had done to me.

My mother and father are long in the grave, and I with them peace and compassion, I no longer look to others for the failures and sorrows of my life.

It was not until a few years ago that i refused to give others the kiss of complicity, and turned my life over to them to blame. I am responsible for me, and always, and do you know the strangest thing about that?

it was when I took back the responsibility for my life that I  began to find fulfillment and meaning and happiness.  I am good at taking responsibility for me. I do it well.

Happiness is not about feeling good all the time, we all feel good and bad, just as we come to learn life and death.

Happiness is about living my life, putting my lips to the world, speaking my truth.  No one can take my words from me or put their words in my mouth.

The voice of a child crying out from the mouth of a grown man is a sadness and a disappointment.

I can no longer bear to hear the rationalizing and excuses and finger-pointing and denial that comes out of grown men and women trying to explain to themselves and others why the lost their lives, gave them away to others, hid from the awful and glorious responsibility of having and living the lives they choose every day of their existence.

I will no longer give my life away to anyone, not even for a single moment of a single day. The days and weeks and months fly by so fast, I will not be standing there at the end of  days looking back in regret.

Don’t cry because it’s over, said Dr. Seuss, cry because it happened.

When a grown man or woman tells me their lives are a misery and a failure, I ask them, sometimes in my head, sometimes out loud:

So tell me: 

What will engage you?

Do you carry around the iron thing?

What will open the locked doors of your consciousness?

What will give you hope and promise?

Like a lover at first blush.

And why are you not out knocking down every door to find what you need?

I will not give anyone the responsibility for my life.

I will not ever pity those who do.