Our Shared Reality

A woman came in the other day for a tour of our facility  with her daughter. They were looking for a place for her husband who is in mid-stage Louie-body dementia and she can no longer care for him at home. Louie-body is now the second most common form of dementia behind Alzheimer’s and one of the many symptoms the victim has is hallucinations. I’m not often surprised due to the nature of the population I deal with daily but what I heard from this woman was truly a first.

She was talking about a recent incident when her husband woke her up very early in the morning and told her that he needed to go to work but he couldn’t take the children. His arms were to his side and out as if he were holding hands with small children. This in and of itself is not abnormal with this type of dementia, but, she took a step toward me and a vivid color of fear swept across her face as she whispered. “I worry that I’m losing my mind, I didn’t see the children but I saw two small shadows against the bedroom wall on either side of my husband's shadow.”

I recall another woman many years ago who was on the brink of suicide after losing her husband. At the time I worked for another company that made Memory Bears for loved ones out of the clothing of the deceased person. I was new to the job and had noticed several weeks a bear with no information. I got a call one morning from a woman inquiring about a bear she was supposed to have received months prior so I asked her to describe the material it was made from and she did. It matched the orphaned bear in my office. The normal process was to have a chaplain deliver the bear to check on the person but none of our chaplains were available until the following week. I felt bad that she had waited so long so decided to take the bear to her myself.

Arriving at the home with the bear, the woman grabbed it from my hand and began weeping as she smelled and hugged it tightly. She invited me in and then shared that just the night before she had reached a decision to end her life. That night she was awaken by her husband playing the harmonica like he did every night in an adjoining room. She sat up on the bed thinking it was just a dream when the playing began again and she was completely awake. She froze and opted not to enter the room but simply sat and listened. When she got up the next day she remembered the bear and called me. She is convinced that her husband came to save her life. He did! I got her in touch with mental health services and the last I checked she was doing much better and enjoying her life again.

A more personal story is of my dad. He had a dream after my brother and mother died that two cloud like vapors appeared in this room and after a few minutes one formed a man dressed in white and then the other vapor formed a woman and he innately knew it was Paul and mom. The image was so powerful that it woke him up. He went to get a drink of water and then wet back to bed. As he lay there awake, two cloud like vapors physically appeared in his room and turned into human forms and then slowly dissipated. He’s had a few visions since the death of Paul and mom and each one carries a message for him to not be grieved about their loss; they are still with him. When he recounts these visions to me, tears of joy swim down his face and he smiles in a deep peace. The visions have changed him. Instead of being the stoic recluse he once was, my dad now goes door to door checking on his neighbors and helping them whenever he can.

There's no judgement on my end for anyone who has experienced the phenomena of being thoroughly shaken from the foundation of their worldliness. I've have my own stories as well as those I've collected from others to make me fully aware that our understanding of the world we're in is greatly compromised. I liken it to a recent conversation with Autumn, my 5 year old granddaughter. I have a coffee cup of the famous painting of Salvador Dali of the face of Abraham Lincoln. Dali was using this painting as an exploration into the subconscious mind's ability to perceive things as well as the science of optical spacing. Within this painting there are other images. The first time Autumn saw my coffee cup, her sister giggled and then pointed out that it has a naked woman on it. Autumn is so focused on that image that she cannot see past it to make out Lincoln's face (I've since put the coffee cup out of their reach). It stands to reason that many are too focused on what is right in front of them to be open to the potential of a completely whole peripheral world.

Lastly, we only need to look as far as the hints left by the Great Spirit when trying to understand our world. Like with color for example. When we look at something that is red we are not correct in that assumption. Color is not inherent in objects! The surface of an object reflects and absorbs color and we only see what is reflected. I feel the same dynamics are at play in our shared reality.

Mona