The Daily Ruby: Mamanjoon

Today I went to my grandmother's apartment to keep her company and to have some fun together. My Mamanjoon has dementia and its pretty hard for her to keep a handle on things. Since my Babajoon (grandfather) passed away a little over 2 years ago, her dementia has worsened at an exponential rate. She forgets information 10 seconds after you tell her. She doesn't have a concept of time, how much time has passed and how much time is left till something is about to happen. She gets sad because she doesn't think she has seen family for days, weeks, months, even if she had seen them that day.

On the flip side, when she does see a family member, like her children, grand kids, great grand daughters, or siblings, she gets instantly happy. She especially loves her great grand daughters, Sheila and Lauren. When Sheila and Lauren aren't with her, she settles for kissing their pictures.

Before going to her apartment today, I had developed and picked up a batch of pictures from Thanksgiving 2006, Thanksgiving 2007, and Lauren's 1st birthday. I got a bunch of simple frames and a scrap book to put all of the pictures in so that she could look at them in between visits from Sheila and Lauren.

You could say I made a bit of a mess. The dining table was bare before I got there. Oops. It's better than my bedroom floor. But that's not saying much.

Here's Mamanjoon keeping busy with scrap booking. She had a lot of trouble doing simple tasks like putting tape on the corners of the pictures, even after I showed her how to, but she really tried hard. I would finish putting tape on the picture and ask her where to put the picture and she seemed to enjoy being involved in that part of the process. Sometimes it seemed taxing for her. She hums constantly, like she has a song in her head.

Mostly she just wanted to kiss the pictures. Especially the pictures with Sheila and Lauren. She talks to the picture and gets totally swept up and carried away and "ghorboun salighe's" the pictures.

Here is some of our finished product. I tried to involve her in every decision as far as picture placement and which decorative elements to put on the page. Sometimes it was very confusing and overwhelming for her, but mostly she liked having pictures of the people she loves in front of her. She would just get lost in that. I kept telling her that we made the scrapbook together, and she didn't entirely understand.

I think I might have over stimulated her. I was really trying to keep her occupied and not get bored.

Below is the rotating 4-picture holder that she really liked. It is of Sheila staring at her necklace, grabbing her necklace, and then putting it in her mouth.

She kept turning the pictures and it finally occurred to her that each of the 4 pictures showed a succession of events and became really excited that Sheila was slowly plotting to get the necklace in her mouth. It was really cute.

This is Mamanjoon showing me her family portrait. Her mother, all 8 siblings, and her are in the picture. She is the cutie in the top row second from the left. Her mom is to her right.

I had a lot of fun with my Mamanjoon. It makes me sad that she gets upset about her memory loss and dementia. She is aware of it, but even gets confused about being confused. But I'm glad that she is able to be happy about the simplest things. Just showing up at her door makes her more happy than anything else you could give her or say to her. She really doesn't ever get sad if she is in the same room with someone she loves. I am very grateful for this. I hope the day never comes when even that doesn't make her happy.