Finding Zen in Unexpected Places: How My Mother's Early Dementia Is Teaching Me to Embrace the Present Moment

"The practice is not to become enlightened in the future. The practice is full, vulnerable, intimate, open participation in our immediate experience, which is all we ever have anyway."_B.Tift

Mama does not know I practice Buddhism. She comes from a traditional Greek Orthodox Christian background, and she would be, if not distressed, at least perplexed at my choice of spiritual practice (when hers is perfectly perfect!)

Not that it matters at this stage in our shared lives, since mum’s early dementia stage is teaching me how to meaningfully practice compassion and a meditative presencing strongly grounded in the now that no Buddhist meditation practice would help me do any better.

For Mum, apart from the deep-past whose memories thankfully she still retains albeit with some “fusion” editing, only the instant present exists, in repetition, in repetition, in repetition, in…

Her repeated questions of what day, month, and year we are now in, who is coming or going, why we need to change the fridge and hot water boiler, when is her elderly neighbour coming to visit her, why haven’t I met yet with my cousin (whom I have already met), when is dad’s memorial service (which we already had), and other present time related activities, are a forceful reminder that all we have is but the “now”.

This experience has also brought to mind the cyclical nature of life, and I've come to realize that it's my turn to give back. I'm reminded of my childhood, when I would incessantly ask my parents "why" and "what" questions, driving them crazy with my curiosity. Now, it's payback time, a time of roles reversing…

My mum’s preoccupation with the present time, linked to her inescapable gradual loss of control over her life, demonstrates every time to me how vulnerable life is, her life, my life…because old age comes to all of us.

There are good days where daily routines and small, nice distractions make her repeated stories entertaining, tolerable. I discovered she loves listening to a Cretan radio station that plays no-stop traditional island music, and so with her, I am rediscovering the beauty of the Cretan mantinadas (couplets) and marvelling with her at the Cretan dialect’s linguistic creativity, wittiness and deep connection with this Mediterranean island’s history. The songs bring back memories from her youth, the island customs and the “purity” of everything.

And then there are days where I need to dig in deep into my patience reservoirs and push the “repeat answer” button with compassion and filial love and care; times when I have to kindly say, “Mum, I know, you just told me this story” or employ reassuring sounds, “really?”, “is that so?”, “hmmm”, or “ahhhh”. A story (and its creative variations) that I might have heard so many times that I know by heart. My nephew was teasing her the other day, finishing off her words, “Grandma, tell us another story; we know this one.” She would stop for a moment, nod in agreement, and then unperturbed, return to the story to finish it off. It never fails to make me laugh, her insistence to have her story told again…and an hour later again… (sometimes it becomes the week’s theme story). I know now that the best way is to let her say it, the deep past is the only connection to her sense of self, and by repeating it again and again she intuitively practices those neurons linked to selfhood.

Whenever I do something for my mother, she always responds with her blessings. According to our family's lore, her own mother's extraordinary blessings played a significant role in her achieving a highly unlikely career path, against all odds and despite being a post-war orphan. Inspired by this legacy, I've been asking my mother to bless me with success as an author. Typically, she would agree but then forget, so I'd prompt her to recall the specific blessings I desire, hoping at the same time to exercise her memory. Today, however, she surprised me by granting my wish without any prompting, remembering exactly what I had asked for. It might not last long, but that blessing was deeply felt.

Mama’s stories, edited, fused, embellished, dramatized, and often performed in ways amateur performers would have envied, are a testament to her will to live meaningfully her “now”. However, Mum’s legendary sharpness has not abandoned her. In the recent tradesmen’s visits to fix various things, she stood by like a hawk, asking questions, checking their work and ready to find potential “cheating” (her generation is hardwired to survival and thus, suspicion is a key behaviour attribute).

Taking her out to the Marina café by the port, and arranging to meet friends, relatives and neighbours give her immense pleasure; Mum loves connecting with people, and once she is out, she enjoys it, although her limited eyesight makes it hard for her.

Mum’s temporality is also accompanied by spatial immediacy. As her eyesight is severely reduced due to macular degeneration, she cannot see very far, so her world is very much focused not only on the immediate now but also on her surrounding space. The only 3-dimension in her life comes from the deep past that is used to anchor everything else.

My efforts to create pleasant memories for her while I am spending time with her can be seen as a bit futile since the day after, or even just a few hours later, she erases them from her memory box, even the most pleasant or memorable of the encounters. At best, with some probing, she will reconstruct some of them, but does it matter?

I love seeing her taking pleasure in the moment, and with her, I am learning the full meaning of the Buddhist practice: a full, vulnerable, intimate, open participation in my immediate experience, which is all I ever have anyway…

Eυχαριστω μαμά/thank you, mama!