Search Results for: the queen of the flowers

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The Queen of the Flowers

I met Teodore Thorvendal, a tall, lanky, ninety-five-year-old Swedish man with a sometimes explosive temper, while living in Seattle in the early 1990’s.

Soon after his wife Crossed Over he lost all of his short-term memory. Every morning when his nephew Stefan, a new friend of mine, came out of his bedroom, Teodore would lunge at him, thinking he was a burglar. Somehow Stefan would convince his uncle again, who he was and why he was living with him. This happened every single day until after a year; Stefan couldn’t take it any more. He was going back home to Sweden and on this particular day, I would be driving Stefan to the airport.

I knocked on the front door and I was relieved that Stefan answered. I was afraid of the old man…the one other time I had come to the door of the house, he pulled the curtain aside an inch or two, peered out at me through the window, wild-eyed, and cursed at me to get off his property. So yes, I was anxious when Stefan invited me to come inside on that last morning. They were just finishing breakfast and he motioned for me to join them in the kitchen. Timidly I followed him in and there was the crazy old man glaring at me. I sat there while they both finished eating; metal spoons scraping up the last of their cereal the only sounds that broke their silent meal. Before I could stop him, Stefan jumped up and said he’d go out and load his luggage into the back of my borrowed truck.

That left me alone with Teodore. He put his spoon down on the table, pointed his long, crooked finger at me and said, “Please. Come with me.” I was afraid – afraid to go with him and afraid to disobey him. Against my better judgment, I followed him through the dark living room and out onto the front deck; the same deck I’d stood on when he cursed at me and told me to get off his property.

“She planted them every summer,” he said, speaking to me softly, shaking his head. “Look at them now – they’re all dead.” At first I didn’t know what he was talking about – I was nervous being so close to this man that could become so agitated without warning. I followed his gaze and realized that the entire deck was lined with planter boxes that were filled with dead bedding plants – flower heads in tact, but stone dead. “Please,” he begged me, “please plant them.”

How did he know? How did this man that I had never spoken with, this man whom I was still not sure was safe to be around at all – how did he know that my most favorite thing in the world was to plant flowers and tend them? We stood there silently, then Stefan found us and he and I were off to the airport – Teodore’s request went unanswered.

Back home from the airport, I replayed the conversation with Teodore in my head. Did he really ask me, a total stranger, to plant his flower boxes for him? It seemed that he had, and I decided to do a good deed. The next day I rode my bicycle to the nursery near my house and loaded up my saddlebags with potting soil and bedding plants. It was an unusually hot summer day and by the time I rode my bike back up north to Teodore’s house I was sweaty and tired. And, I have to say, quite proud of myself. I was helping this “poor old man” with his dream to somehow bring back part of his wife’s memory by replanting her garden.

I leaned my overloaded bicycle up against the edge of the deck with a bit of a thud. The front door flew open and there he was; the crazy, wild-eyed man screaming profanities at me, demanding that I get off his property. I was mad now. Hadn’t I just spent my own money, not to mention my sweat equity, to get all these supplies? Isn’t this what he had asked me do? Yes, I was afraid of him, but now I was pissed off. He wasn’t going to beg me to do something and then threaten me when I did it. It was too late – I’d had it with him. I flew around in a rage and told him it was none of his business, that I’d bought the plants after he’d asked me to, and now, like it or not, I was going to plant them. I glared at him hard. We stood there for a few moments, both of us stubborn and fierce. He wheeled around, went back inside and slammed the door.

I have to tell you that this was a first for me. I had never challenged someone, anyone, like this before. There was something about him, or about the combination of the two of us that gave me the courage or the strength or the foolishness, to stand up to him…or maybe it was fueled by my big, fat, bruised ego.

I began working on the flower boxes, and as always, I found the peaceful rhythm of hands-into-dirt, plants-into-soil. I calmed down. I forgot all the craziness. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that he was peering at me through the window. Again he’d pulled the curtain back and was following my progress. When he saw me looking at him he threw the curtain shut again. Sometime later I heard the door open. I paid no attention. Finally he said quietly, “No, not there. Don’t put them there, they should go over in that one,” pointing his long gnarled finger across the deck. Glaring, I told him it was my garden and I’d plant them where I wanted. He slammed the door again and watched me from the curtained window.

After dragging a hose around from the backyard and thoroughly watering these new, young plants, I stood back to view the garden. The door opened and he spoke. His demeanor had changed – back to the imploring voice he’d used on me when he first asked for this garden. How was he going to take care of it? He was an old man; a weak old man and he couldn’t drag the hose over, or lift a full watering can…the flowers would just die. He was wringing his hands. Still suffering from a rather large and bruised ego I stared him in the eye and said coldly, “It’s my garden. I’ll take care of it.” I walked down the steps, climbed onto my bicycle and rode away without looking back.

Seattle was having a true heat wave and I was concerned about the newly planted garden. Two days later I rode back up to Teodore’s house. What would I encounter with the old man? Was I in real danger? My love for the young plants propelled me to return in spite of my fear of him. They needed water. This time I snuck quietly up onto the deck. Maybe I could water the plants without him knowing. But wait – not only had they been thoroughly watered, they had all – every single planter box – been carefully tended to. As I surveyed the garden, I heard the front door open. For some reason he didn’t yell at me, he just watched. I ignored him. He remained at the door, watching me through the screen. When I was satisfied that the plants were going to live for a few more days I turned to leave. Changing my mind I faced him. He tensed. Fear, then rage, flooded his face. I tensed too. Slowly I approached him. Part of me was screaming, “Are you insane? RUN! Get away from him, he’ll hurt you!” Then his face gentled and a smile formed in the most miraculous way. “Well, if it isn’t the Queen of the Flowers,” he murmured in a beautiful, deep, Swedish lilt. “The Queen of the Flowers.”

For the rest of that summer I visited Teodore most every week. He cared for the flowers – never have I seen such a well-tended garden. The moment any impudent weed had the nerve to appear, Teodore’s long fingers plucked it out. Somehow he found the strength and balance to carry watering can after watering can to quench his beloved garden’s thirst. My visits became social calls, not garden interventions. We would sit in his dark, cool, living room, he in his circa 1960’s plaid, upholstered, rocking chair. With eyes closed he would recount story after story of his childhood in the countryside of northern Sweden: the log over the creek that he and his friends would run across, the adventures they would have. Eventually he shared with me that each night before he fell asleep he’d pray that he’d awaken in the morning so that he could care for the garden. He told me he knew that’s why he was still alive, and that he was happy to be alive. In all other endeavors he continued to have absolutely no short-term memory. How could he remember me? What, or who, did he see when he looked into my eyes?

Each visit began with me approaching the front door. He’d draw the curtain back peering out, fearfully. The curtain would drop, the door would open an inch, and before he spoke, something would happen. I’d look into his eyes, he’d look into mine and after a moment he’d sing out, “Well, if it isn’t the Queen of the Flowers.”

It’s been over twenty years now since I met this remarkable old man. The experience has woven itself deeply into my bones…into my psyche. It’s about aging, about how our minds forget and also what they can remember; it’s about what’s beneath fear. And when I moved back home far from my current life, to help out my aging father, who coincidentally (?) was named Ted (Theodore) and lived to be ninety-four, my time with Teodore was patiently waiting there to guide me toward finding a way to connect with my father who had begun his own long journey into forgetting.

To listen to a radio interview I gave on The Story, about The Queen of the Flowers, click HERE.

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Queen of the Flowers: an interview with Lauren Silver

Listen to Lauren’s interview by Dick Gordon from the podcast, The Story.

From the podcast introduction: “When Lauren Silver first met the uncle of a friend, Teodore, he was a cranky old man who screamed at her. When she saw Teodore again he was different – he even asked Lauren to plant flowers in his yard. Lauren didn’t understand then what she knows now – that dementia can spur fear and erratic behavior in its victims. Lauren talks with Dick about how she earned Teodore’s trust, despite his illness. The two formed a deep friendship, and Lauren soon became “The Queen of the Flowers.”

grace AND dementia in the same sentence

Maybe you cannot imagine these two words linked in the same sentence: grace and dementia. The more time I spend with people who are going through a shift in the way they perceive their world, the more grace I discover.

Please. Dip your toes into the remarkable stories of the ones I have come to know. Many of these stories are about my father. He was and still is, the one who is teaching me the most about the landscape of dementia, even though he’s been gone now for years. There are others as well…other grand old ones with great gifts for me – treasures squirreled away in their twinkling or terrified eyes, in their enormous hearts, whole or broken-open…always they come bearing gifts.

The Queen of the Flowers, is the tale of me as an unknowing wanderer who ends up at the doorstep of a man with absolutely NO short-term memory, and how he and I found our way deep into each other’s hearts. This man, Teodore, gave me a crash course in dementia before I’d ever heard the word, before I knew there was such a thing as short-term memory loss. Our time together was a graduate degree in dementia crammed into the span of one hot summer. And to him I make a broad and low bow for the gifts that he bestowed upon me; his unknowing, then eager, student.

I hope that you will dive into this world that continues to bless me. I hope that sparkling tears will well up in your eyes and maybe roll down your cheeks. I hope that you laugh out loud too. All of this and more wait for you inside this world that our culture has turned away from, for far too long.

Welcome. Welcome Home.

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grace AND dementia in the same sentence

Maybe you cannot imagine these two words linked in the same sentence: grace and dementia. The more time I spend with people who are going through a shift in the way they perceive their world, the more grace I discover.

Please. Dip your toes into the remarkable stories of the ones I have come to know. Many of these stories are about my father. He was and still is, the one who is teaching me the most about the landscape of dementia, even though he’s been gone now for years. There are others as well…other grand old ones with great gifts for me – treasures squirreled away in their twinkling or terrified eyes, in their enormous hearts, whole or broken-open…always they come bearing gifts.

The Queen of the Flowers, is the tale of me as an unknowing wanderer who ends up at the doorstep of a man with absolutely NO short-term memory, and how he and I found our way deep into each other’s hearts. This man, Teodore, gave me a crash course in dementia before I’d ever heard the word, before I knew there was such a thing as short-term memory loss. Our time together was a graduate degree in dementia crammed into the span of one hot summer. And to him I make a broad and low bow for the gifts that he bestowed upon me; his unknowing, then eager, student.

I hope that you will dive into this world that continues to bless me. I hope that sparkling tears will well up in your eyes and maybe roll down your cheeks. I hope that you laugh out loud too. All of this and more wait for you inside this world that our culture has turned away from, for far too long.

Welcome. Welcome Home.

SERVICES

Speaker:

If you’d like me to speak at your conference or give a presentation for your organization, send me an email:

lauren@gracewithindementia.com

Even those who’ve had no exposure to dementia as yet, share that attending one of my talks was the “most life-affirming experience” they’d had in a long time.

Communication, compassion and translation in the landscape of dementia: Join writer, storyteller and teacher Lauren Silver in a presentation devoted to expanding compassion and increasing communication and translation skills in the ever-changing landscape of dementia. Her stories based on experiences with her father and others with dementia will open your heart, make you laugh and maybe even make you cry. Whether or not you have someone with Memory Loss in your life, you will learn about relating more fully…to everyone.

Lauren Silver learned to communicate in the language of dementia first as a friend, then as a caregiver, and finally, miraculously, as a daughter with her own father, when dementia crept into their world. She traveled to her childhood home to assist her elderly parents, stayed for four years and along the way, learned to communicate with a man who was utterly familiar, completely changed, and everything in between: together they entered the uncharted territory of dementia.

Lauren was interviewed on THE STORY, a National Public Radio program, about her essay, The Queen of the Flowers, which describes her unexpected friendship with an elder who developed dementia following the death of his wife. She has guest lectured in a community college training course for dementia caregivers in British Columbia. For a year and a half, Lauren volunteered weekly in a Memory Loss unit and attended their monthly Family Support meetings. She serves as a consultant with family members and other caregivers, helping them develop new communication skills and strategies.

Consultant:

Use my experience to help you come up with new approaches in communication, compassion, maintaining a sense of humor, finding ways to grieve life-changes and role-changes and lots of others possibilities. For more information, send me an email:

lauren@gracewithindementia.com

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she was so happy to meet you

First, I need to tell you about Arnold, a self-described “Spare Tire Preacher”. Do you know what that means? I sure didn’t when I met him.

“Oh, you know…when a minister from one of those churches “out a ways” needs a day off…they call me. I’m just an old spare tire…so they can have a day off now and then…nothin’ special, just an old spare tire with a little bit of tread left on me.”

We met in June of 1995 – in Iowa. I moved out there to help a friend and her husband open a café. We each wore many hats in order to make this dream come true… one of my hats said that I was the baker. My friends had lived there for three years and Arnold had become family to them…like a father, or an uncle.

He heard that I would be baking a pie every day for the café, and although we were already becoming fast friends…my pie-a-day assignment sealed our friendship.

All summer long, we remodeled one of the old, vacant buildings on Main St. We had a booth at the local Farmer’s Market on Saturdays so the town-folks could meet us and know what-in-the-heck was going on down at the old vacant insurance office next to the old theater. We sold fresh-brewed, iced, herbal teas dispensed out of one-gallon glass jars, along with fresh-baked cookies and muffins that we were testing out for our grand opening.

Each Saturday Arnold came down to sample our wares and give us his opinion – which was always the same. “These are the BEST I’ve ever tasted!” He was sweet, gentle, kind. White haired with calm blue eyes, humble, generous – it was completely outside of his vocabulary, outside of his consciousness to utter harsh or angry words. It wasn’t that he just kept them stored up inside; he was simply full of love.

In his younger days, he and his wife had owned a nursery together. It was their pride and joy. They worked hard, hard, hard – but they so loved the work and they so loved each other…his eyes always sparkled when he told me stories about the place and about his wife. When Arnold found out about my own love for plants, well, then the stories really started coming. Stories about fruit trees that he nursed from tiny seedlings, stories about grand trees he had met in the midst of his work as an Arborist. Arnold was the kind of Arborist who believed the sole responsibility of such a position was to do whatever was necessary on behalf of the tree he’d been hired to doctor. He always said, “The tree was my boss…not the landowner.” He loved plants, adored trees as if they were family. For Arnold, they were family – and without me saying so directly, he knew it was the same for me.

Arnold was in his 80’s when I met him. I finally convinced him to take me along on one of his Spare-Tire-Preacher assignments. He kept saying, “Oh…it’s nothing, really. I just do my best so the people can have their Sunday Service.” But I knew, in the way that you know when you meet someone with an enormous heart, that even though “going to church” was not my style…I knew that I would be touched by Arnold’s words.

It was hot and steamy, as it is in Iowa in the summer. We drove out to a little town…out in the middle of that land of lush, green farmland with rich, black, soil peeking out on the edge of fields mostly chock full of corn or soybeans.

For me, this field trip with Arnold was a grand adventure. Born into a secular Jewish family, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d ever set foot inside a church. And, I’d only seen “country churches” like the one we were approaching, on TV or in the movies. It was a classic, old, white clapboard church with a tall steeple, complete with a thick, well-worn rope for ringing the church-bell. The grand oak tree in the churchyard whose arms reached out long and low, was ready to hold as many children and their families, as wanted to climb into her gnarled embrace.

Arnold’s sermon was full of love and praise for we, the well-meaning, but sometimes problem-causing humans who came every Sunday to be reminded of how to start again and simply face toward the Light. His eyes watered with almost overflowing tears, his face shone with love for every single person there, and they felt it: simple and profound.

As I began to spend more time with my new friend, he spoke more about his life, and most importantly, about his wife. Whenever he spoke of her, his entire demeanor absolutely glowed. He loved her in a way that I’d never experienced myself, nor even come this close to as a Witness. In the beginning of our friendship his mention of her was only a few words, but even then, the deep and enduring love he felt was instantly apparent.

I was shy, and, as with much of social practices in the Midwest, the approach of anything was slow and steady. That is the pace at which I learned about Arnold’s beloved wife.

In the fall of that year we opened our café and Arnold came down every morning to “make sure that the pie was ‘up to snuff’.” While tenderly patting his belly he’d say, “I just came from seeing my wife and she wondered if maybe I didn’t need to taste your pie every single day. I told her someone had to taste them to make sure they were just right.” His smile was infectious and soothing. My day began at four in the morning with a pretty hectic baking schedule, so I looked forward to Arnold’s daily visits around 10-o-clock, to make sure the day’s pie passed his test.

Sometimes when Arnold sat down, I’d pull up a chair for a few minutes. “My wife’s hair is so beautiful,” he’d say dreamily. “I brushed her hair for her, this morning. She loves it when I brush her hair, it’s almost like she’s purring.” Slowly, over all these months of little bits and pieces from him, and from my friends who’d introduced me to Arnold, I began to get a wider picture of Arnold’s life with his wife.

For much of the time, I’d imagined that he was coming from their home when he spoke of her, spoke of telling her a story or a joke, of watching her laugh or hearing her wonder if he really needed pie EVERY DAY. While it’s true that his morning did originate from their home…she no longer lived there.

Arnold’s wife was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. I learned from my friends, that Arnold cared for his wife at home for a very long time. He fed her and bathed her and carried her from kitchen table to living room chair to their bedroom. Every day and every night. For over ten years. And finally he could no longer lift her safely…for either of them. I cannot imagine the crushing heartbreak that crashed upon both of them when they faced this stark reality. They had no children of their own…that nursery, those plants, those majestic trees – they were their children and although they lifted their spirits every day – they could not lift Arnold’s wife when she needed to use the bathroom or go to bed at night. And finally Arnold couldn’t either.

By the time I met Arnold, his wife had been in a “home”, to use the word he used, for maybe five or so years. Arnold’s love for her and his incredible intimacy about every detail of her being was so enormous, that when I heard him speak of her, I heard her voice, I saw her eyes twinkling, I sensed her purring as he brushed her hair.

The thought had been rumbling around in me for some weeks now, and finally, in spite of my immense shyness, and not wanting to burden him with any more than he was already carrying, finally I asked. “Arnold, could I come with you when you visit your wife? I really want to meet her.” Instantly his eyes filled with tears – a few escaped and rolled down his cheek. “You want to meet her? Oh, she’ll be so excited. She’s been wanting to meet you. I’ve told her all about you…and your pies!” And with this, he smiled a broad and glorious smile.

We agreed on a day and time when he would finally get to introduce me to his wife – and his wife to me. Just as he’d been speaking of her to me, everyday, he’d also been telling her stories about me, and the café. It was time for we who both loved this dear man, to meet.

At this point in my life, although I’d heard of Alzheimer’s, sensed the fear and tension in the voices of people who spoke of it, I had never met anyone with a family member afflicted by it – and I certainly had never met anyone that was in the throes of the disease, themselves. At least in my circle, and I suppose in our culture at large, at this time…the middle 1990’s, people just didn’t speak of it. Alzheimer’s was mostly something that people did not want to speak of. All of this swirled about within me as Arnold and I drove toward his wife’s “home”. I say it swirled…but it was not something I was consciously thinking about, it was more that my mood was a little more timid, a little more quiet, than other times I’d spent with Arnold. I noticed this…but it was subtle.

After some minutes of silence Arnold shared that when he told his wife last evening when they’d had dinner together, that he was bringing me to meet her today, she was “absolutely overjoyed…beaming with delight.”

“I finally get to meet the ‘love of your life’,” I smiled at him. Boy did he smile back.

As we got out of his car, I realized that the picture I’d had in my mind of her “home” was not at all what we were approaching. This looked a lot more like the “Lutheran Home for the Aging” where I’d visited my 95-year-old Swedish friend, Teodore, at the end of his life. To hear Arnold speak of his wife and their mornings and evenings together, when he said “home”, I saw an individual home…not this small scale, institutional kind of “home”.

We walked down a hallway and Arnold gently knocked on a door that looked like all the other doors along the hallway. As he carefully opened the door, he called out to her with such love in his voice, it brought tears to my eyes. “Here she is! I told you I’d bring her for a visit!” As we entered the room I realized there was a lot that I had imagined incorrectly.

Her room was small but thankfully had plenty of natural light; one window centered in each of three walls. She sat in an unusual chair with her back to us. Arnold sang out to her, “I brought our friend Lauren! Here she is to meet you!” We circled around to face her and in that one moment all my imaginings washed away like someone had poured water on a freshly painted watercolor painting.

Arnold’s wife was propped up in a chair that was an odd cross between a wheel chair and a barber’s chair. Her body was twisted unnaturally into something that kind of seemed like she was sitting in the chair…but not by her own doing. And. She did not move. At all. No part of her moved; not her eyes or her mouth. No movement. Arnold continued cooing to his beloved wife. He spoke to her just as he’d recounted so many conversations to me. Told her about his morning, about our drive over to see her, about the pie he’d just had. He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “She is so happy to finally meet you,” he murmured to me.

Slowly I approached her. She was beautiful in her stillness; shoulder length hair that was a warm, soft white. Gorgeous blue eyes…deeply blue. I began to speak to her, doing my best to speak to the presence, to the soul of this woman who was still alive, but not able to join us in the way that I, at least, was used to being joined. I told her how long I’d been wanting to meet her, told her how much I enjoyed hearing Arnold’s stories about their nursery, and that the best part was hearing how much Arnold loved her. As I spoke, he gently brushed her hair. He finished with a most tender kiss on her forehead saying that it was time for us to leave.

I don’t remember our drive back to the café, where it was now time for me to prep for the next day’s morning bake. I had journeyed to a place I’d never been – and had no context for what I’d experienced. I do remember that when Arnold dropped me off, he turned and thanked me in a barely audible whisper. His beautiful eyes were glistening with tears.

The next morning, just like clockwork, Arnold came in for his pie. He was so excited to tell me about his visit with his wife that morning. I had a little time to spare and sat down with him at his table. “She was so happy to meet you,” he sang out. “So happy!”

“How do you know, Arnold? How do you know that she was happy to meet me?”

It wasn’t that I doubted his word…at all. I simply didn’t understand what I’d witnessed. He told me that because he’d been with her for so many years, so many years before this illness had climbed deep inside of her and taken so much of her with it, he knew her in the most subtle of ways. “She was especially happy this morning…it was because she met you.”

“But how can you know that Arnold?” I asked, tenderly.

“Oh, I could see it in her eyes. You’d be amazed at what you can see when you look into someone’s eyes. When she’s happy, there’s a sparkle there. I know it when I see it. Lauren, my wife and I have known each other for a very long time. There is a language that she speaks with her eyes. I know what happiness looks like in those beautiful blue eyes.”

I visited Arnold’s wife just that one time. Life at the café became more complicated…my first Midwest winter roared into my world and it consumed me in ways that I could not have imagined. And then I moved away from Iowa, from the café, from Arnold and his beloved wife.

In that one visit, for those twenty or so minutes, I was witness to a kind of love, a kind of communication, a kind of presence so profound that I am still sitting at the feet of those two teachers each and every day. Twenty years now, I still sit at their feet.