Refreshing a Mother’s Memory with Love and Stories

Jenny McPhee, Director of the Center for Applied Liberal Arts, recently had a Modern Love article published in the New York Times. Here it is for your weekend reading pleasure…

“Recently, my mother’s geriatric specialist told me there was a significant rise in dementia in those 60 and older (my mother is 81), particularly among women, and no one really knows why. I later joked to one of my sisters that with women having to endure so much injustice throughout their lives, it was perhaps a relief to forget it all.

But that’s just me being cynical. This story is not cynical.

I have a large family, and at Thanksgiving, we were 35 sitting around several tables in my mother’s dining room, and that didn’t even include us all.

My mother once flourished in a crowd, playing the perfect hostess, making every guest feel as if his or her presence was crucial. Nowadays, any gathering beyond her five daughters flusters her and she often retreats to her bedroom. During the Thanksgiving celebration, she pulled me aside and said with panic: “Jenny, who are all these people and what are they doing in my house? I feel so strange to be here with all these people I don’t know.”

To continue reading the article click here.