When my daughter was a wee lass, I used to take her to zoos filled with amazing animals. Her favorite animals were squirrels and pigeons. I used to take her to botanical parks filled with amazing plants.  Her favorite part was the pigeons and squirrels. I used to take her to aquariums filled with amazing fish. Her favorite part was…. I don’t remember but it was not the fish.  I would love to be able to say that I was a wise enough parent to recognize that these outings weren’t about appreciating the animals, plants and fish.  The truth is I was not. Not that I ever discouraged her from appreciating the squirrels and pigeons because let’s face it squirrels and pigeons are Fun with a capital F, but I never stopped trying to “refocus” her onto the whatever bit of nature we were supposed to be admiring and “learning about.”  That is what I thought we were doing, that was my agenda. I don’t remember ever having done this but it wouldn’t surprise me if at some point on some outing I actually said something like, “We are here to enjoy the (insert activity) and damn it we are going to enjoy the (insert activity)!”  Sigh.  Talk about completely missing the point of our father-daughter outings.  On the bright side, we did pretty much always get ice cream.

I spent a few days recently with a close family member who has Alzheimer’s disease, and a “complicated history” spanning decades with all of us to whom she is a close family member.  When I interact with her, it sucks the marrow out of my soul (Do souls have marrow? Well, if they do, post interaction: soul marrow = gone). When I interact with her, it is the tangled roots of that complicated history which bring me stress, anger, and frustration & sadness both to the point of tears; and compassion, empathy, and a heartfelt wish to be something providing a measure of peace in her life.

The symptoms of her dementia are boulders which are becoming larger and more frequent in the stream, but the core difficulty lies in those tangled roots.  I was recently reminded that Family is often simultaneously the best and the absolute worst of the challenges we face in trying to navigate the waterways of human relationships, and that I seem to have really been “rewarded w a particularly complex matrix of familial bullshit.” I laughed really hard at that, and also recognized the wisdom it contained. I have indeed been “rewarded w a particularly complex matrix of familial bullshit.” Of course, I know I am not alone.  I also know, without being too much of a Damn Hippie about it, that I am lucky to have been given repeated opportunities to learn how to swim in the rapids and troubled waters. I am a much better swimmer because of it.  The matrix of our familial bullshit is a huge part of the murky waters that shape the kind of swimmers we are.

My close family member has significant cognitive impairment, but still a long way to fall down the nightmare well into nothingness that comes with this dementia.  During my visit we went to the zoo.  We went to the botanical park.  We went to the aquarium.  Although she attended to more than the squirrels and pigeons (which are still Fun), it was instantly apparent after we were only a few feet into the zoo this was not really going to be a trip to the zoo (or botanical park, or aquarium).  Unlike when my daughter was a wee lass, somehow from my initial annoyance and frustration (We are here to zoo! This is NOT how people are supposed to zoo!!), a tiny bubble of awareness rose within me and I was miraculously able to step back and see this was not about us enjoying the zoo.  It was about spending time together, me being gentle, me being tolerant, me setting aside an agenda of what it meant to “go to the zoo,” and instead just be with her, wherever that took us.  Weird, right? I suspect performing daily random acts of kindness across the last months had some thing to do with it, but who knows.

This pattern repeated itself multiple times over the 4-day visit, and each time it took recognition that I had an agenda and a conscious effort to set that agenda aside in order for the interaction to go well.  Sometimes my agenda was based on wanting to share something that was special to me, something I hoped would bring some happiness if even for a moment to her day.  Sometimes my agenda was driven by me wanting to control her behavior to avoid embarrassment (not to herself but embarrassment to me).  Sometimes my agenda was a smoke screen to avoid discussing topics of conflict (things she wants to do but cannot because she has Alzheimer’s disease), topics which elicit from her rage, frustration, sadness and fear, topics which leave me feeling defensive, sad and powerless.  Sometimes that setting aside of my agenda felt centered and coming from a “wise” place.  Sometimes it felt more like, “Fine, do whatever you want. I give up” which did not so much feel like it was coming from a centered or “wise” place.  All this wrapped in the context of a long history of playing narrowly defined roles on the grand stage of family dynamics, roles not based on being genuine but on “a particularly complex matrix of familial bullshit” (which still makes me laugh).

Whether my agenda was loving or self-serving, my setting the agenda aside was from a place of strength or helplessness & apathy, the interactions went better.  By “better” I don’t mean we had more fun, or she discovered the wonders of nature as I would have liked to share, or we had moments of healing family closeness.  For me, there was less frustration, less stress, less crazy making, less hopelessness. On her part, she was less resistant, less negative, less angry, and was a bit more engaged.  Hardly a series of moments from a made-for-TV Family Special, but most certainly less aversive for us both which was nice. Plus, I had plenty of time to enjoy the pigeons and squirrels, which continue to be Fun with a capital F.