September 27, 2009

Anyone who doesn't believe in spirits, or an afterlife, or ghosts has never spent time with an elderly person with Alzheimer's. For the past few days, my dear friend Magdalena (Lena for short) whom is 82 years old, has been "hallucinating". It stresses out her daughter, another person that I chauffeur and also help take care of on the weekends. She has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Her name is Lynn and she is the youngest of three children, all girls, but she is the only daughter of Lena's second marriage--which by Lena's account was a happier and healthier marriage than her first marriage. All she continually says about that marriage is, "He is dead, that drunk!"
Where was I...oh yes, ghosts and hallucinating. When I signed up to take Lena around to church and to the convent and just hang out with her, it was known that she had dementia on top of macular degeneration--an eye disorder that can lead to complete blindness. But her dementia is getting worse. Lena keeps asking me if I see "the woman wearing a blue scarf". She has also seen a line of people going into her walls and here recently she has recounted a harrowing tale of a break-in. Not a literal break-in, mind you. Lena told me that some people, "kids" came into her house without her permission and they stayed the night. Lena called the police.
Of course, everyone was gone. Then, when we were out and about, heading to Schoenstatt, she saw people walking in the street in a line. She gasped and exclaimed, "They have the same eyes as the visitors last night! I called the police but they were gone by the time they got there..."
Probing, I discussed these people. Lena further elaborated that one washed all of her windows (at her home) and so she let him stay the night with a few others. But she was scared, she said. "I am alone, you know? I told them to get out. It was probably rude but... I was scared!"
Her daughter tried to tell her that she was hallucinating. I found this kind of ironic since Lynn (the daughter I speak of) has schizophrenia and is prone to hallucinating. Inside I am thinking, "Lena, your daughter knows what she is talking about!" Lena swears that these people were real. Nay, ARE real. She muttered several times today, "Next year, I won't let them in."
"They don't speak. I don't understand why they won't talk to me. I talk to them but they don't talk back." I asked her what they looked like and she said, "Like you and me!"
It is my personal opinion that since Lena is so advanced in age and therefore closer to death than we are, she is able to pierce the veil. I get a bit ill thinking about her inevitable passing but I am intrigued by death and the change of energy that we all will experience one day.
I am really drained right now because I am having a "flare up". Usually when they happen I get wiped out of energy, I get a kind of "brain fog" and I can't think coherently. Right now I am doing good just to type this out. Of course, what you don't see is that I am on my back on my couch and I am watching the clock and thinking, "Why can't I feel this tired in the middle of the night?"
It must be the lady in the blue scarf's fault. Dammit. Well I hope you enjoyed this little tidbit of 'nothing interesting really'. I would very much like to share with you the life of Lena--a refugee from Germany who was cast out of "the old country" when the Nazi's were taking hold.
"What did we know about Nazis? We had no radio, no TV....we didn't even have electricity!" Lena says. "It's better, though, that they kicked us out. We were so poor."
Guten abend mein freund. May the strange visitors keep you in good spirits.