Caregivers to Partners with Dementia Need Rituals and Practices
In a previous article, I explained that words are useful for categorizing what we already know, but all the information (facts and figures) in the world won’t foster the ongoing transformation we’re going to need to adapt to living with our partner’s dementia.
Cognitive disorder is a state of uncertainty and unpredictability. We cannot know if, when, or how our partner’s capabilities will diminish. We cannot foresee when the excruciating pain of our ambiguous grief will bring us to our knees. In order to take in and process all of this uncertainty, we need rituals and practices that support us in trusting our hearts for guidance while living with the complexities of being a caregiver to a partner with dementia.
Mark Silver (Heart of Business) teaches his clients (including me) that while the mind is really good at understanding, categorizing things, weighing options, and presenting facts and figures, it struggles to “confront the unknown, leave space for mystery, and take in something that’s never been seen before.”
The heart, he goes on to say in this article on Medium, “is fantastic at the Mystery. At taking on the unknown. At knowing truth and sensing into which way is most nourishing.”
Dementia Caregivers Don’t Need Information—We Need Rituals and Practices!
As a life-long poet and musician, I know how rituals and practices work. Becoming an Associate (Oblate) of Saint Benedict’s Monastery provided me with even more exposure to rituals and practices.
Writing for Psychology Today, Rebecca J. Lester tells us that rituals “not only mark time; they create time. By defining beginnings an ends to developmental or social phases, rituals structure our social world and how we understand time, relationship, and change.”
Caregivers to partners with Dementia understand that our dear ones’ understanding of time is changing, our relationship is changing, and everything is always changing. Creating daily rituals that work for you and your partner will help them, and you, live more peacefully.
We, for example, have bells on our phones that chime at prayer time, 3 times every day (morning, midday, and evening), replicating the monastic prayer schedule our Sisters follow. I have noticed that this ritual is calming and grounding for both of us, for marking time, and yes, for creating time for our relationship to be rooted in love, again and again, and again.
Last summer I desperately needed some respite time, in a space where for a whole week my needs and desires wouldn’t be sacrificed to meet his. While my spouse understood and wanted to support me in taking care of myself, he was also incredibly anxious about being without me for a whole week.
While I was away, every day, three times a day at our customary times, I called him, and we said our daily prayers together. He told me that connection helped his time without me pass more quickly and without anxiety. He knew that whatever time it was, it wouldn’t be long until he would hear me voice, and we would be together again in prayer, which is a circle of love that exists in all times and places.
A ritual, by the way, is simply a routine approached with mindfulness, where we focus on the process and purpose instead of on the outcome. Making morning tea might be simply a routine that my partner engages in to provide us a hot beverage with a kick of caffeine. But his intention—to offer hospitality and service, because making tea is something he can still do for me—turns his routine into a meaningful, loving ritual.
Creative and spiritual practices are the things we do to connect to our inner wisdom, to others, to nature, and to Spirit. Practices are designed to teach us to let go of the assumption that we KNOW. They work to cleanse us of the presumption of superiority. They awaken us to the awareness that you and I are neither more nor less good than any other human. Some of my practices include bodywork in the form of yoga and qigong, contemplative reading of poetry and sacred texts, silence, singing, breath work, and mindfulness meditations.
Because practices show us our imperfections, hopefully in a way that teaches us to accept ourselves as merely human, they help us relinquish our superiority. Practices ask us to take our place as an always equal, never inferior or superior member of the human race. This is an especially important skill to bring to a relationship in which our partner’s behavior and needs become increasingly different from what we expected, and set us up for the devastating mistake of believing we are superior to our partners.
Rituals and Practices Allow the Heart to Interact with the Unknown
Interacting with the unknown opens us to the reality that because we don’t now what will happen, we can’t control the outcome. Rituals and practices teach us to trust that we’ll be okay, no matter what comes our way. We begin to see there are possibilities and choices, that there is not just one “right” path.
Is there a ritual or practice that feels inviting to you, something you might easily and without too much effort incorporate into your life? Is it something you could share with your partner? Could you relax into the art of surrender, stop fighting and striving to fix things, control things, manage things, and instead simply accept reality as it is?
One of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, also knew the truth about surrender. In the first years of the 20th century, he wrote to the young poet Franz Xaver Kappus,
“So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?”
What I hope this caring in difficult times is accomplishing in you and me, is a deepening of compassion. More about that in my next article…