Puzzles for Brain Health

Isn't he charming?

My husband has always enjoyed working puzzles. For years, we subscribed to a so-so newspaper just because he enjoyed the New York Times crossword puzzle, which he usually completed in fifteen minutes or less. I enjoyed the comics and the letters to the editor, but that's a topic for another day.

Helping Papa

When my husband was diagnosed with this illness, puzzles were suggested as a possible therapy to keep his mind active. So I went out and bought puzzle books, the kind with the answers in the back in case you get stuck. But I noticed, once he started going to work with me every day so he wouldn't be home alone, that he was less and less interested in crosswords. I also noticed that he would "solve" one or two words incorrectly, get stuck (no matter how many times I suggested checking the answers in the back), and move on to another puzzle. I downloaded easier, children's crosswords to no avail. I tried mazes, which were more successful. But only for a while. And we switched to our old pal, jigsaw puzzles.

His favorite jigsaw puzzles had always been the really hard ones with lots of tiny pieces that look alike. Well, they all looked alike to me, with subtle color variations and barely any indication of skylines or lakefronts until the puzzle was coming together. It was a challenge. The pieces would be grouped together by color, shape, size. And naturally the border was always completed first, a kind of frame for corralling unruly pieces. I knew these puzzles would be out of the question.

A couple of years ago, he was interested in completing 500-piece puzzles (with quite a bit of help). A year ago, he worked 100-piece puzzles. I went to the dollar store and purchased dozens of 100-piece puzzles. Every time they had a new one I thought he'll like, it came home with us.

Today's puzzle.

Early this year, I started working the borders for him, and he worked the main body. Though he will sometimes surprise me by completing the rest of the puzzle entirely on his own, this is becoming a rarity even if he's worked the puzzle many times before. In fact, where he used to work at least one and sometimes two or even three of the 100-piece puzzles a day, he now seems to have lost interest. A puzzle can sit on the table for days, unfinished. He takes coins out of his pocket and organizes them with the puzzle pieces or even as part of the puzzle, as if they somehow belong there.

Has the task become too much for him to handle, or is he just bored? I suspect the former. There's lots about this illness that's evil and discouraging and depressing. This is just one of many things.

The Wallet

A couple of years ago, my husband started fixating on his wallet. More specifically, he started fixating on the items in it. The minute we sit down somewhere, out it comes. He takes everything out of the credit card slots, places each item carefully on the table, asks me about each one, and says, "Where's my money? I don't have any money!"

I show him that he does indeed have some money in the back of the wallet. He takes the bills out, looks at them, carefully replaces them. I coax him into putting his wallet back in his pocket so it doesn't get misplaced. Outwardly, I'm as calm as can be. Inside, I'm freaking out and hyperventilating. I wonder why this bothers me so much. It's traumatic. It triggers something in me.

And then I remember. My dad used to do the same thing. It would drive my mom bananas as she tried to cope with caring for her man, who was slowly going away just as my husband is. He used to have exactly $5 in his wallet, and he counted it over and over, much to her dismay. I used to wonder why this bothered her so much. I get it now, Mom. I'm sorry I didn't understand then, but I most definitely do now.

I Get Off Work at 6

I just found this post that I never published. It's a little rough and from almost three years ago, when my husband was still driving (only in town) and was home alone while I was at the office (three days a week). We live less than a mile away:

He shows up at the office at 5 o'clock thinking I should be home by now. I explain that I don't get off at 5 o'clock. I have never gotten off at 5 since I started working at this job (25 years ago).

"Well, what time do you get off?" he asks impatiently.

"6 o'clock," I reply. (My hours are 9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m., with an hour for lunch.)

"6 o'clock? Who gets off at 6 o'clock?!" He leaves the building in a huff. As quickly as he arrived, he gets in his car and vanishes.

But he comes right back and parks in the parking lot, where I can see the vehicle. He comes in without saying anything, standing right inside the outer door, in my line of vision. He is obviously very impatient, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back. He leaves without saying anything. It's a little creepy, to tell the truth.

I used to think this was passive-aggressive behavior. Maybe it is, but maybe he just misses me, wants me to be with him all the time, and doesn't understand why I'm not home at 5 like everybody else. Yes, I am aware that not everyone is home from work at 5. But, evidently, he doesn't remember that when he was working, it was a minor miracle if he was home before 7. I decide to leave work a few minutes early and arrive home at 6 p.m.

"What took you so long to get home?!" he demands, looking at his watch. [He still looks at his watch, but he could tell time back then.]

"I came home a few minutes early," I cheerfully respond.

"Early? It's 6 o'clock!"

"Yes. I get off at 6 o'clock. I left a few minutes early."

"Who gets off at 6 o'clock?!" he exclaims.

Reading that again, I marvel at how "normal" (comparatively speaking) our life was at the time, and how restricted it has become (more on that to follow). He never did remember my work hours, though, no matter how many times the conversation was repeated. Before I "retired," he wondered why I was still working, why I had to stay until the end of the work day, why we couldn't just go somewhere. Now that I'm retired, he wonders why I'm not at the office. I can't win.

Experimenting with Meditation

As we walk on the bluffs above the straits on this beautiful, sunny day, I decide to try an experiment in meditation for my husband. Meditation, we've been told, might help with the agitation an Alzheimer's patient frequently feels in the late afternoon. My objective is to help him quiet his mind by focusing on hearing.

I find an isolated bench in a peaceful spot on a small wooden footbridge overlooking the water. We sit down, and I ask him to close his eyes. I close mine.

"What do you hear?" I ask him.

"You," he replies, facing me with his eyes wide open.

I decide to try a different tack.

"All right," I venture, "I have my eyes closed. Please close your eyes. Are your eyes closed?"

"Yes," he responds. But his eyes are open.

"Please close your eyes so you can concentrate on hearing. I hear the waves on the shore. I hear a car in the distance. I hear birds singing. What do you hear?"

"Like that thing there," he responds. His eyes are open, and he's pointing to a screw sticking out of a board.

I am getting the idea that hearing is not what we need to concentrate on today.

"Okay, let's do something else. I feel the sun on my skin. It is warm. Do you feel that?"

"Yes."

"Do you feel anything else?" I ask, the cool breeze blowing the hair away from my face.

His hand finds its way to my leg as he sits closer to me. This is not exactly what I had in mind, but it will certainly do.

Where's Your Husband?

I'm standing at the stove, cooking dinner. It's been a fun afternoon, followed by some really spectacular sundowning by him and an outstanding meltdown by me. Dealing with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde can really take it out of a person, especially the day after daylight savings time starts. Everybody's body clock is off kilter, and it's a full moon. Just being "real."

"Where's your husband?" he asks while spreading his puzzle pieces in random fashion all over the kitchen table.

"He's here," I respond.

"Really? Where?"

"You're my husband," I explain, perhaps a little bit more flatly than I intended.

"Oh. Okay," he says with as little enthusiasm as I've heard in a long time.

Golly. Thanks...

Time for a Shower

Just over a year ago, I noticed that his hair didn't seem very clean after he had taken his shower. I started reminding him to use shampoo. A while after that, I noticed he wasn't using soap, either. So I started reminding him to use soap and shampoo. And I stood on the other side of the glass shower door to make sure he was doing that.

But soon I noticed that I was having to remind him to take a shower. And that he was just standing under the water, wetting down one side and then the other and then the first again, until I handed him the soap and placed shampoo in his hand. The shampoo sometimes was used to wash places you don't usually clean with shampoo, if you know what I mean.

So I decided it would be more efficient to kill two birds with one stone, especially since I was starting to have trouble convincing him to take a shower at all, much less regularly. I started showering with him.

Sometimes he stands with his arms out so I can make quick work of it with the soft shower puff and a nice body wash. Sometimes he doesn't know what I mean when I ask him to lift them. Most times I have to explain several different ways that he needs to get his hair wet so I can shampoo it. Then I must remind him to rinse the shampoo out. I reach around the shower door to get his towel so I can hand it to him. He sometimes leaves the shower area before I can grab mine.

If I'm not quick about getting out and drying off, he will have donned the underwear I've placed at the ready for him before I can remind him to use deodorant. I've decided not to worry about it too much. He's clean; that's what matters. Right?

Car People

It's a gloriously sunny day in our little town today, so we took advantage of the break in the weather to enjoy a morning stroll along the cliffs by the waterfront on the west side. I thought I would scope out some good sketching places. I've decided the time is right for me to "retire" at the end of the month, for a variety of reasons, and art therapy is supposed to be good. Perhaps both of us will benefit!

But I'm going off on a tangent, as I often do. Back to my main point, which is that you just never know what you're going to see or whom you're going to meet when you go on a walkabout in our small city.

My husband and I were standing on the sidewalk, admiring a house we've (well, to be fair, that should be "I've") always loved. It's a cream and green Tudorish place on a well-situated corner, just a block or so from the water. When we first moved here some 35 years ago, it was for sale but needed some work we weren't prepared to undertake, given that the price of the house was at the very tippy-top of our budget, it only had a one-car garage, and the yard was too small for even the tiniest garden. We bought elsewhere, but every time I walk by this place, I think of what could have been.

At any rate, the next-door neighbor happened by, and we got to talking about the house and how the garage would have been too small for my husband's collector cars (at the time, a '36 Cadillac and a '36 Buick). The gentleman brightened and insisted that we meet his son, who was in their shop working on his pride and joy, a '63 Chevy pickup. It turns out they're part of a car club we'd joined but then were really unable to participate in due to my husband's illness. Who knew? They want to come by to see my husband's projects. Thank you, Julian and Sean, for reminding me that just one small thing in common can bring out such good will in people. I hope you do drop by.

The sad thing, of course, is that my husband can no longer work on his projects. But car people are car people, and they love to kick tires. Even if they don't exactly remember why.