At least once during these monthly writing challenges I find myself writing about Roberta, my friend who has dementia, my friend who doesn’t know my name any more. Earlier this month I wrote a note at the bottom of my daily writing file where I put ideas for future writing. The note said, “gifts Roberta has given me.”
By gifts, I mean gifts, literally. She was good at it, always found something that I both liked and needed, even if I didn’t know I needed it. Maybe 30 years ago she gave me a cooking pot with a glass lid that I still use almost every time I make pasta. Even longer ago she gave me a purple velour jacket with pretty bone buttons from Henri Bendel on West 57th Street off Fifth Avenue (and that store hasn’t existed since the 1980s), a jacket that always hangs on my coat tree, a jacket I wear in the house in the winter when I feel cold. More recently, maybe ten years ago, she gave me a beautifully woven wicker basket that now sits on the floor behind my couch, filled with my grandson’s metal cars and trucks.
And it went both ways: on her bedroom bureau is a little glazed pottery container with a matching lid that I gave her decades ago. It is filled with earrings and bits and pieces of things, sitting there on her bureau next to other little containers, all filled with things that she will never use again.
Thank you for this...it really resonates as I have a friend with a similar issue and I will be writing about her as well. The gift she gave..oddly enough... was one of memory. This piece hold so much love and care and inevitable loss. Heart is with the writer on this one.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful—especially starting the piece with dementia and ending with the containers on the dresser filled with things she’ll never use again. Poignant
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