Glenda's Safari

Imagine a frail older lady about 89, long white hair she is almost as thin as bones. Suffers from vascular dementia and lives her life on repeat every day, confined to a locked memory care unit for the rest of it. She can still do many things on her own but her mind wanders and brings her back to a time that was the hardest for her. The second she wakes up she’s screaming and calling for her husband. Her husband passed away years prior to this but she doesn’t know, she can’t understand or comprehend and grasp the idea that he’s gone. Every day, when she realizes he’s gone, this lady wanders screaming endlessly for him. She does have moments when she is eating or doing other things where she’s not thinking about him and can go about 10, sometimes only 15 minutes where she’s not calling his name. This is how she lives her life now, all day, every day, until she was brought to my class.

I start instructing the group on the 1st steps and she starts shouting his name so, I go over to her, speaking quietly and calm with a soft, soothing tone explaining what we’re painting and what to do. I gently pick up her hand and placed a brush loaded with paint in it and start guiding her using a simple “hand over hand” technique. She immediately stops screaming and starts painting on her own. I take my hand off hers and she starts swaying her brush from side to side. Her distraught, broken face starts to relax, forming the biggest smile. She goes through the next two hours following every instruction and completing her painting. That day I guided the group to make a “safari sunset” with the most beautiful and vibrant blends of orange, red, yellow and burgundy colors in the sky. You can see the silhouette of the ground and animals walking over it as the suns dropping under the horizon.

Usually, this woman speaks in mumbles only verbalizing a few words clearly. But, at the end, when everyone was staring at their paintings, admiring the work they’ve done, she starts talking. She started telling everyone at the table the stories of all the places that her and her husband had traveled and all the details of the adventures they’ve been on. She said one her most favorite places in the entire world was in Africa where they once took a trip and did an expedition on one of the safaris, watching the sunset while looking at all the animals lined up at a watering hole in the distance. She kept going on and on about the colors in the sky and the memories she shared with her husband.

Staff members walking by saw what was happening and I instinctively chuckled seeing their jaws drop, double taking when they saw her because they couldn’t believe what she was doing. One of the nurses paused and after listening for a moment, I could see the tears forming in her eyes as she walked away after. At the end as I started cleaning up, I walked back near her and she grabbed my arm tight, looked straight into my eyes and said “Thank you, dear” after that I watched her face drop and she started mumbling again. Slipping back to her “now normal” and broken state of mind.

I absolutely love what I do because, it hurts me the most when I hear someone say that people who suffer from Dementia can't learn anything new. Working in this industry I've heard it countless times and I’m just so happy to prove them wrong.

I started off as an Activity Director at a senior community, moved up to marketing and consulting and now I own a business where I travel to different assisted living and memory care communities, providing step by step canvas painting to groups of residents. Because patience is one of my strongest characteristics, I can work with people who suffer from every level of dementia. With my background in activity planning, I know how to prepare and get everything in order for classes while simplifying the process for our seniors.

The painting is easy, it’s the prep work that takes the most time. I use scissors to cut out all the shapes and silhouettes of the animals and plan out strategically how to guide them through the lessons, while knowing that half the people can’t even pick up a fork with food and bring it to their mouths. Some of them can’t even gather enough attention to paint on their own so I use other methods where they feel like they’re doing the paintings themselves.

People talk about art and how they use it as a hobby, but for me, it’s definitely more of a passion. I can use my art to inspire and help others who are suffering mentally, physically and emotionally, every day, at the ends of their lives. Art is the most beautiful form of escape in this world and what I’ve done with it, I turned it into the most fulfilling career.