Collage therapy

It's a sad fact of life that many of us will see a close friend of relative suffer from dementia, and wish that we could find a way to break through the fog, if only for a minute.  Recently I heard a lovely story from an artist friend of how she has a neighbor, in the later stages of Alzheimer's, visit her once a week so the husband/caregiver can have a day off.

When this arrangement began, my friend discovered that the neighbor loved to look through magazines and find pictures she could identify.  They started a project in which they cut out pictures that the neighbor liked, and pasted them into a book.  Over the months, the neighbor gradually lost her ability to cut and paste, so my friend the artist did that part.  Eventually the book got full.

Now it's part of a ritual.  When the neighbor arrives each week her book is waiting for her on the table with a cup of tea.  The silver lining of dementia: each week the book is new and exciting.  She goes through the book slowly and can occasionally tell a little story about the pictures.  For instance, when she was a child, she lived on a farm and had horses.

I thought this was a great idea for an activity that keeps on giving.