Journey Through Dementia

Journey Through Dementia

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Puzzles

 I got this bright idea to ask her if she wanted to go upstairs and work a puzzle.  She said yes!  So we went up to the puzzle tables and found a puzzle that apparently had been finished but someone was taking it apart.  We decided to put it together again, about 1/3 of the left side of the thing.

We sat there for two hours working the puzzle.  While we were working, the Brain Gymnasium (remember that?) was going on in the room next to the puzzle area and hearing the group laugh and talk together made me sad that my mother refuses to consider going.

I noticed something interesting about her.  My mother has been a puzzle fiend all of her life.  We both are.  We are very good at jigsaw puzzles.  We look at pieces and generally find the right piece for a certain space without having to try a lot of them.  But we stayed to complete the puzzle and I know she was getting tired.  That's when I noticed she would pick up a piece and seemed to have no idea how to turn it to put it in a spot.  She'd try large round edges into small holes.  It didn't last very long, but I was surprised at how she seemed completely incapable of doing the puzzle.  Fortunately she snapped out of it soon and was zipping through the last few pieces, but I had the distinct feeling  that this was part of her dementia too.

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