The Windmills of the Mind

Pick's disease is a progressive frontal and temporal lobe dementia characterized by marked personality and behavioral changes. It sucks. It claims its victims in 2-10 years and most require 24 hour care and likely in an institution.



She shuffles and goes out the door, around the paths that snake around outside and back in again. She stops, briefly, seemingly unsure of how to put one foot in front of the other again. She is found under a tree, she can't move, she is stuck and I give her my hand and we walk out onto the path again.

I help her eat lunch and she is like a mechanical bird, eating around the plate until there is a pile in the middle. If the pile is spread out, she stops. I pile the food again for her and she commences eating again, and then, birdlike, she sips from her glass, doesn't get any drink but the act of sipping is done, then a bite of food, around the plate, then the sip, then the bite, then the sitting and waiting, again and again. I wipe her mouth, she looks at me with eyes so blue and I recall the picture I saw of her when she was herself and I feel sad.

She begins walking again and I chuckle that this is the only exercise I'll get all day, walking hand in hand with her, around and around, stopping, sitting, getting up and going around again.

Her family is devastated, they have lost her and she will never return, there are pictures, and memories, they are too painful to remember somehow for them, they remember her blue eyes and their own eyes fill with tears or become angry because although she is still on earth she has gone and they can't find her.

I can't reach them. I try. But I can't. So I walk with her and I help her eat and I sit with her and hope that somehow she knows that this stranger can feel her families pain and her pain, wherever it may be, and wants to help her to the other side, peacefully.