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Romance in the recesses of memory

As reality fades, romance can bloom in unsorted corners of the mind .

By STEPHEN NOHLGREN
Published December 25, 2006

My mother has a boyfriend.

She's 89, believes she's 117 and can't fathom why her wrinkled face attracts a man in his 50s.

Yet there he is almost every day, smiling, laughing and insisting she is beautiful.

In reality, Ray Teasdale is not my mother's beau. He is therapeutic recreation director at the nursing home where Mom lives, Menorah Manor in St. Petersburg. In a booming voice he leads wheelchair dancing, sing-alongs, flag-waving, balloon-batting and discussions about old movie stars.

None of these activities appealed to Mom when she moved in six months ago. "I can't follow the directions," she told me.

So Ray found time to work with her one-on-one. They talked about houses she had lived in. They sang her favorite Methodist hymns. He enticed her to sit down at the piano again, where she stumbled through a few strains of America the Beautiful.

"He pats me on the hand," she confided in a rare, clear moment, her face aglow. "It makes my day."

Mom has Alzheimer's disease and can't comprehend that she lives in Florida now, not Georgia. Having watched her life recede into a mosaic of fact and fantasy, I can understand how her struggling brain turned Ray's attention into a boyfriend thing.

It didn't hurt that my father was also an "R," Ralph. He was tall and balding and smiled a lot, just like you-know-who.

"Have you seen him?" Mom often asks. "Have you seen Ra ... Ra ... Ra?"

When I told Ray about my mother's delusion, he blanched. He once knew a nurse at another home who encouraged a demented resident's love interest. They were sweethearts, the nurse said. They were going to get married.

When the resident discovered the truth, she was crushed.

I'm not worried. I've seen how Ray gives the same tender care to all the residents.

During one group discussion, Flo Green blurts out that she is going to die. Ray stops the discussion and bores in.

"How do you feel about that?"

"I'm trying to prepare."

"How are you preparing?"

"I'm trying to be a good person."

"You are a good person and a good mom. Do you feel like a hug?"

"Yeah."

Ray has time to work with small groups because Menorah has an ample supply of staff members and purple-vested volunteers to help ease his workload. As a faith-based home with lots of private-pay residents, it can afford the extra hands.

Mom, as I knew her, is slowly disappearing into the darkness of Alzheimer's. My visits are invariably shrouded by the sadness of our loss, the memories of what we once had.

Ray carries none of that baggage. He's a professional who simply accepts her for what she is in the here and now: a soul with feelings and value. She's still in there somewhere, and Ray knows how to coax her out.

One day, seven wheelchairs surround Ray as he passes around a photograph of Gertrude Leon when she sang opera dressed as Madame Butterfly.

My mother won't open her eyes to look at the picture. Ray tweaks her.

"What did you do for a living, Jean?"

Her eyes fly open.

"I was a bookkeeper and I loved every minute of it."

"What did you like about it?"

"It was a challenge."

Now that Mom has adjusted to her new surroundings, she gets less one-on-one from Ray and more group interaction.

She's not sad about this new development. She interprets it matter-of-factly.

"I think he has a new woman," she confided not long ago. "He only sees me when he wants me to throw the ball."

Encounters is dedicated to small but meaningful stories. Sometimes they will play out far from the tumult of the daily news; sometimes they may be part of the news. To comment or suggest an idea for a story, please contact editor Mike Wilson at mike@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2924.

[Last modified December 25, 2006, 05:48:27]