Thankyou all kindly for comments about the maiko pictures - it really was a fun thing to do and worth every yen of the Y18,000 it cost for make up/dressing/photo posing inside/photo posing outside and rickshaw ride/undressing and make-up washing.
Yes, walking in the high wooden sandals - called pokuri? - is hard, the bottoms are sloped, so if you lean forward too much the whole balance gets out of whack. Also in kimono you have to take tiny little steps and sit down with care. The photographer had ideas about me sitting on the tatami mats, but with my knee and general all-round inelegance I didn't think it was possible.
Ahh......that was then.....like a dream now! Only a week ago.
Back in my reality we are dealing with Okaasan's fantasies.
Basically she is much better now - been to day care twice, and even joined in the hula dance class at the center. We took her out for a sushi dinner and she walked with me...slowly ...down to the restaurant.
The weather has been crazy with a massive typhoon in Japan, and here we had strong winds and rain and then SNOW in some areas a few hours drive from here! So Okaasan hasn't been out for an independent walk this week.
Yesterday I washed all the clothes that she has piled up permanently on her sofa. About 20 camisoles and 4 pajama jackets.
They still weren't dry by evening, so I thought I should tell her as there was a big gaping clean space on the sofa.
"Oh, those clothes? They were all mixed up, but I think they were all clean!" she said in surprise.
"Um, I don't think they were so clean....they are drying now. They'll be ok tomorrow."
Funny - I guess to her they are things that have just been in the laundry and are waiting to be folded and put away. Only she never puts them away. Ever. She paws thru them and selects one to wear, then when she takes it off she just puts it back in the jumbled mass again. I haven't washed any of these camisoles since early summer...and I know she hasn't.
So. Not so clean then.
And. The Winter Coat Fantasy.
The department store woman in Tokyo who sold me my coat 5 years ago is going to come to Hokkaido and deliver me a new coat, because I ordered one from her.
This fantasy appeared last year when Okaasan's winter coat was split at the back arm seam (her back is so bent, it distorts ordinary clothing). When we talked about buying a new coat she came up with this story of the already-ordered coat from Tokyo.
Dear Son was with Okaasan in that Tokyo department store and he knows that the sales staff was just making polite chat about "oh, you are moving to Hokkaido with your son! oh, Hokkaido, maybe I will come one day! how interesting! etc".
In Okaasan's fantasy this has grown into an actual relationship with that woman. Okaasan has written notes on bits of paper - kind of practice letters - saying "how are you, I'm ok, it is cold in Sapporo now, I look forward to seeing you when you come with my coat...." I've found these bits of paper on her table.
Of course, she doesn't know the woman's name, address of the department store or any other thing. And certainly Tokyo department store staff don't personally deliver single coats to one-off customers!
So. This weekend we will set out as a happy, stressy family to the big department store IN Sapporo to buy a new coat. We planned to do it weeks ago but the whole Leg Pain Can't Walk saga put it on hold.
When we've mentioned this plan to Okaasan she immediately tells us: "Oh, we don't need to buy a coat in Sapporo, I've ordered one from Tokyo!"
Dear Son will tell her directly: "no, that woman in Tokyo never promised to deliver a coat, you are wrong, let's go!" And Okaasan will look confused and constantly question his version of events. It must be so confusing - something you are certain is true. To be told that it didn't happen.
You have to trust the people who are telling you so much. Trust that they may be right. Trust their version of your own life.
Showing posts with label memo writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memo writing. Show all posts
Friday, 18 October 2013
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
Dementia and writing
Been thinking about Okaasan and the winter coat story.
She firmly believed that the Tokyo department store staff was going to come to Sapporo and bring a new coat. Believed the woman had made a promise and was coming soon.
A polite conversation 4 years ago while buying a coat about an imminent move to Sapporo had transformed into a promise from a shop assistant to personally bring a coat hundreds of miles away to a customer.
Really odd.
But, now I realise that Okaasan thinks she had actually been in written communication with this woman. And if you write something, it seems to have more reality.
Okaasan's table is always covered with scraps of paper covered with her writing: recipe ideas from TV shows, telephone numbers of TV shopping, notes about English words (!!!!) and other scribblings.
A month ago I gave a Japanese friend one of the longer scribblings to translate - just interested to know WHAT Okaasan was writing about.
And yes - I know I'm invading Okaasan's privacy etc etc. But hell, I'm writing a public blog about this lady, without her knowledge...so I'm way beyond any privacy lines here. And you are reading this blog, so we are all in this together :-)
The friend said it appeared to be a practice writing for a letter to someone: something about "now it is September and if you come to Sapporo I will show you around, and I don't have a winter coat, so please being one with you..."
Now it makes sense. She was writing - or practicing to write - to the Tokyo department store staff. 99% sure that the writing never became a real letter. Okaasan doesn't know the name of the staff, or the address of the shop etc And I don't think, even in Japan, shop staff do personal deliveries of coats, unless you are a superstar customer.
But it's made me think: do/can dementia sufferers communicate more in writing, than in speech? What we say is such a fleeting thing, and for dementia that is bad - you don't know if you said it or not, or to the right person, or if they heard. You can't remember.
But writing something on paper is safer: it is there for you and someone else to read and understand.
Okaasan often says:" did I tell Yujiro this? I said this before, didn't I?" - and often it is something we've never heard before. She thinks she has told us. In her mind she had the thought, but is uncertain whether she expressed that.
Writing is a better way.
But, of course...not for Okaasan. She is living with an Oyomesan who can't read her notes without outside help. And her son hardly looks at the stuff on her table. So the thoughts go unnoticed.
Maybe I should start prying around the table scribblings more...
She firmly believed that the Tokyo department store staff was going to come to Sapporo and bring a new coat. Believed the woman had made a promise and was coming soon.
A polite conversation 4 years ago while buying a coat about an imminent move to Sapporo had transformed into a promise from a shop assistant to personally bring a coat hundreds of miles away to a customer.
Really odd.
But, now I realise that Okaasan thinks she had actually been in written communication with this woman. And if you write something, it seems to have more reality.
Okaasan's table is always covered with scraps of paper covered with her writing: recipe ideas from TV shows, telephone numbers of TV shopping, notes about English words (!!!!) and other scribblings.
A month ago I gave a Japanese friend one of the longer scribblings to translate - just interested to know WHAT Okaasan was writing about.
And yes - I know I'm invading Okaasan's privacy etc etc. But hell, I'm writing a public blog about this lady, without her knowledge...so I'm way beyond any privacy lines here. And you are reading this blog, so we are all in this together :-)
The friend said it appeared to be a practice writing for a letter to someone: something about "now it is September and if you come to Sapporo I will show you around, and I don't have a winter coat, so please being one with you..."
Now it makes sense. She was writing - or practicing to write - to the Tokyo department store staff. 99% sure that the writing never became a real letter. Okaasan doesn't know the name of the staff, or the address of the shop etc And I don't think, even in Japan, shop staff do personal deliveries of coats, unless you are a superstar customer.
But it's made me think: do/can dementia sufferers communicate more in writing, than in speech? What we say is such a fleeting thing, and for dementia that is bad - you don't know if you said it or not, or to the right person, or if they heard. You can't remember.
But writing something on paper is safer: it is there for you and someone else to read and understand.
Okaasan often says:" did I tell Yujiro this? I said this before, didn't I?" - and often it is something we've never heard before. She thinks she has told us. In her mind she had the thought, but is uncertain whether she expressed that.
Writing is a better way.
But, of course...not for Okaasan. She is living with an Oyomesan who can't read her notes without outside help. And her son hardly looks at the stuff on her table. So the thoughts go unnoticed.
Maybe I should start prying around the table scribblings more...
Friday, 21 October 2011
Option C?
Nope.
Didn't work.
Well, half worked, I guess.
Lunchtime stuff: she didn't eat at all. May have been because she'd just come home from the dentist and didn't feel like it.
Dinnertime she ate the raw fish, ate the salad, didn't eat the potato salad because it was too hard....and couldn't WAIT until 7 pm when the rice cooker was ready....so she went OUT for more food.
;-(
That wasn't the idea at all.
Why couldn't she wait? Or why was she trying to eat dinner before 7 pm? It's always been the time we do dinner. I found the shopping receipt that shows she was in the local supermarket at 6.47 pm....if she'd waited 30 mins there would have been freshly cooked, steaming rice in the rice cooker.
Ho hum.
Option C, which we've just come up with is : to use hot flasks and food containers. Cook up lunch in the morning before we go to work and leave it for her on the kitchen table.
All she'd have to do is open up the flasks and the hot food, rice and soup will be inside. Like food delivery service, but delivered by US to the table at 9 am when we head out to work. We used a lunch delivery service 2 years ago in winter. It was fine, but in the end Okaasan got a little bored with the food and asked us to cancel it.
This weekend we'll go and look at flasks etc and see if Option C is workable. Can't do any more burned pans.
I know this all seems like mountains-out-of-molehills - but that's the daily life stuff that occupies our minds with Okaasan. How to make things easy for a lady who has failing abilities, while maintaining the cheerful facade that "nothing is wrong"....
SHE thinks she can heat up stuff in pans and feed herself.
We know that left to herself in the kitchen she burns the pans and leaves uneaten or half-eaten food out on the counter or table.
She'll never go hungry because she can find the food on the table or fridge and help herself, and she can go shopping and buy pre-cooked or cold food.
But the rice/egg/soup cooking in the pans isn't so successful anymore and as winter arrives she won't be able to get out and shop.
We have to find a way of giving her hot food at lunchtime, without her using pans and the cooker.
On a different topic: Okaasan and her memo making.
She is always doing this. Sitting in front of the TV making memos about recipes and TV shopping telephone numbers etc etc. When she isn't writing memos on scraps of paper she is picking them up from the table and carpet around her and looking at them thoughtfully, setting them to one side....and then minutes later picking up the same memo.
It's obviously a self-preservation method against the deep-down knowledge that she IS forgetting important stuff.
The other day one of the memos ended up mixed in with our post. Maybe she'd left it on the kitchen table and it got scooped up with letters.
Anyway: it's for a recipe for noodles and sesame sauce, other random bits of writing...and this:
"To prevent the onset of dementia it is important to focus on yourself and give up trying to be a good wife and mother". (this was in Japanese of course).
How true! Yes, absolutely.
It comes back to what I reckon is my biggest question about dementia - how far Okaasan understand her own condition - truely, deeply inside herself.
I think she must know, must worry about it and hopefully accept that we will help out when things get a bit mixed up.
When she sees programs on TV about dementia does she think - "oh, I should watch this, it may help me"...or is it more "one day I may be like this, how sad for these people".??
When she is asking me about which trash goes in which box, or what day of the week it is, or what she ate for lunch - all of those kind of questions about things she would usually know, but now isn't sure about - is she acknowledging that things are falling away bit by bit?
Anyway. Interesting to find Okaasan making memos about dementia!
Didn't work.
Well, half worked, I guess.
Lunchtime stuff: she didn't eat at all. May have been because she'd just come home from the dentist and didn't feel like it.
Dinnertime she ate the raw fish, ate the salad, didn't eat the potato salad because it was too hard....and couldn't WAIT until 7 pm when the rice cooker was ready....so she went OUT for more food.
;-(
That wasn't the idea at all.
Why couldn't she wait? Or why was she trying to eat dinner before 7 pm? It's always been the time we do dinner. I found the shopping receipt that shows she was in the local supermarket at 6.47 pm....if she'd waited 30 mins there would have been freshly cooked, steaming rice in the rice cooker.
Ho hum.
Option C, which we've just come up with is : to use hot flasks and food containers. Cook up lunch in the morning before we go to work and leave it for her on the kitchen table.
All she'd have to do is open up the flasks and the hot food, rice and soup will be inside. Like food delivery service, but delivered by US to the table at 9 am when we head out to work. We used a lunch delivery service 2 years ago in winter. It was fine, but in the end Okaasan got a little bored with the food and asked us to cancel it.
This weekend we'll go and look at flasks etc and see if Option C is workable. Can't do any more burned pans.
I know this all seems like mountains-out-of-molehills - but that's the daily life stuff that occupies our minds with Okaasan. How to make things easy for a lady who has failing abilities, while maintaining the cheerful facade that "nothing is wrong"....
SHE thinks she can heat up stuff in pans and feed herself.
We know that left to herself in the kitchen she burns the pans and leaves uneaten or half-eaten food out on the counter or table.
She'll never go hungry because she can find the food on the table or fridge and help herself, and she can go shopping and buy pre-cooked or cold food.
But the rice/egg/soup cooking in the pans isn't so successful anymore and as winter arrives she won't be able to get out and shop.
We have to find a way of giving her hot food at lunchtime, without her using pans and the cooker.
On a different topic: Okaasan and her memo making.
She is always doing this. Sitting in front of the TV making memos about recipes and TV shopping telephone numbers etc etc. When she isn't writing memos on scraps of paper she is picking them up from the table and carpet around her and looking at them thoughtfully, setting them to one side....and then minutes later picking up the same memo.
It's obviously a self-preservation method against the deep-down knowledge that she IS forgetting important stuff.
The other day one of the memos ended up mixed in with our post. Maybe she'd left it on the kitchen table and it got scooped up with letters.
Anyway: it's for a recipe for noodles and sesame sauce, other random bits of writing...and this:
"To prevent the onset of dementia it is important to focus on yourself and give up trying to be a good wife and mother". (this was in Japanese of course).
How true! Yes, absolutely.
It comes back to what I reckon is my biggest question about dementia - how far Okaasan understand her own condition - truely, deeply inside herself.
I think she must know, must worry about it and hopefully accept that we will help out when things get a bit mixed up.
When she sees programs on TV about dementia does she think - "oh, I should watch this, it may help me"...or is it more "one day I may be like this, how sad for these people".??
When she is asking me about which trash goes in which box, or what day of the week it is, or what she ate for lunch - all of those kind of questions about things she would usually know, but now isn't sure about - is she acknowledging that things are falling away bit by bit?
Anyway. Interesting to find Okaasan making memos about dementia!
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