Shoes + Socks
“I like your shoes,” she said.
“I like your socks,” I replied. They were a bright-but-not-too-bright green and orange argyle.
The client I came to visit was snoozing in a nearby chair so I sat down to chat with Dee for a few minutes. I never like to wake someone up who is enjoying a good morning nap and there wasn’t anything else going on at their memory care facility at the moment.
Dee is 92-years-young. She has the skin of a 60-year-old and I asked her for her secret, which, come to think of it, she never told me. She said she lived most of her life in Indiana and followed with a tale that had me utterly captivated.
Dee was originally from Chicago as were my parents. She recalled with ease her childhood home and was familiar with my parents' neighborhood. But that’s where the similarity ended.
Dee grew up in the Masonic Home for Children. She was institutionalized at age 3 and remained there for 11 years while her mother and older siblings lived at home. This was the era of the Great Depression and it sounded like Dee’s father had died, leaving little money to support the family. Her mother came to visit every 2 weeks and Dee described feeling completely traumatized each time she had to say goodbye.
Daily life was regimented and exhausting. By age eight, Dee had learned how to iron a shirt and described the harrowing chore of feeding bed linens into one end of an enormous machine and then racing around to the other side to catch them as they came out freshly pressed. “A person never gets over that,” she sighed, summing up lifelong feelings of abandonment in just a few words.
As a teen, Dee was able to return home and attend high school where she met her husband, Jim, who she described as “the nicest man I ever met.” Despite insisting that she was terrible at math, she would go on to receive a scholarship to the University of Indiana and attend college with hundreds of servicemen who were taking advantage of GI Bill scholarships after WWII. “There were so many students on campus that they had to set up quonset huts as temporary dorms and I could always tell which students lived there by their stooped posture,” she chuckled, describing the crowded quarters with low ceilings.
Dee eventually had four children and became an English teacher (which explains her talent for story-telling). She spoke fondly of the family life and multiple businesses she and Jim were able to create together. Like many, Alzheimer’s seems to have clouded her memories of life beyond her youth, and her stories became less detailed as the tale went on.
And then my client woke up.
In just 15 minutes, I felt as though I was transported in time and had experienced an entire feature film. I thanked Dee for the riveting chat about her life and followed my client into the next room.
Alzheimer’s Disease takes away a lot but it can’t take away someone’s life story. History lessons, love stories and wisdom are often just sitting there waiting for an audience.