Mind-Body-Spirit, Fighting Back

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Like so many of us, I was deeply saddened to hear that Dame Barbara Windsor died on Thursday, n big screen icon and small screen legend. I well remember her in the Carry On... films and later as Peggy Mitchell, landlady of the Queen Vic in EastEnders.

Sharing the news of her Alzheimer's with the world was a selfless act of great courage. Previously,  Alzheimer's - indeed, any form of dementia - was a taboo subject as, sadly, many mental health issues
are still. By encouraging it to be openly talked about and debated has helped enormously in providing a much needed focus on and greater understanding of a devastating disease.

I have published other poems about dementia on this blog, but the kenning below was written with Dame 'Babs' Windsor in mind. I don't have dementia, but years of hormone therapy for my prostate cancer have stolen so many precious memories that I often feel as if my life is falling apart; it upsets me; it also makes me angry to the extent that I will sometimes say and/ or do things completely out of character. I cannot begin to imagine how anyone with any form of dementia, their loved ones and friends, cope on a daily basis. 

We owe Barbara Windsor a debt of gratitude, as much for her campaigning as an ambassador for the Alzheimer's society in latter years as for decades of entertaining us with her acting skills, not the least of which has to be her  ability to make us laugh. To the very end, she was an inspiration.

(Photo from the Internet.)

MIND-BODY-SPIRT, FIGHTING BACK

I prey on memories
pick and choose those you keep,
those you lose,
any left sure haunt mind-body-spirit
like kind ghosts
watching over us, no matter who,
where or why,
self-appointed guardian to the best
of human nature

Enter, human nature
sussing me out, defending its rights
to the end,
confiding in few for fear they may fail
to grasp the nettle,
pursue much the same old lines of life
and its passion
for seeing is believing, no understanding
of identity fraud 

Identity fraud, something
I do well, insinuating mind-body-spirit,
undermining it
as much and often as possible, fight-back
notwithstanding,
yet never (quite) succeeding to throw
a knockout blow,
if only for misjudging its native passion
for joie de vivre

Even I, Dementia, must concede from the start
there’s no taking over the human heart

 Copyright R. N. Taber, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Misty Memories OR Time, No Final Curtain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

An earlier version of this poem  appeared in Poetry Monthly magazine (April 2007) and subsequently in my collection, Accomplices to Illusion, the same year; it was written with a friend in mind, but also for the many thousands of people diagnosed with dementia and their carers to try and give them some encouragement and help them through the early years of what is a heart-breaking condition

My friend rarely indicates that he recognises me now, but his friends and family know the person who is my friend is still there, inside the person he has become, because every now and then he finds a way - if only fleetingly, through the ever thickening mists of dementia - to tell us so. 

Time, even unto death and beyond, has neither remit nor power to erase living memory altogether, especially where love is concerned.

'Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.' - Oscar Wilde

“That I shall love always,
I argue thee
that love is life,
and life hath immortality”
- Emily Dickinson,  That I did always Love

MISTY MEMORIES or TIME, NO FINAL CURTAIN

Let life be painting pictures on the heart

for the soul’s grasp forever to retain,

so the mind’s eye, less clear than at the start

and peering through mist,can enjoy again

Though memory’s jigsaw, it may fall apart,

fitting the pieces, we make bad choices,

the mind’s ear, if less clear than at the start,

is still listening out, hears love’s voices

Our finer senses, heart and soul shall hone,

if seen to work in mysterious ways,

so Memory, though fair stripped to the bone,

to the inner self stays true all our days

Though we be taken for but shadows in a mist,
we know better whom love has ever kissed

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2019

[Note:The dinal couplet of this poems was revied, May 2020.]

Harvesting Imagination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem is especially for ‘Hanna’ who asked if I have another poem about dementia as she looks after her brother who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; they both liked Misty Memories that I posted recently.

About 750,000 people here in the UK have dementia, and this number is expected to double in the next thirty years. I have seen the unbearably sad consequences for both sufferers and their carers. The British Government says it is committed to improving the care and experience of people with dementia and their carers by transforming dementia services to achieve better awareness, early diagnosis and high quality treatment at every stage and in every setting, with a greater focus on local delivery of quality outcomes and local accountability for achieving them. Let us hope so.

Some young people may say it does not affect them, but I know of at least two school children helping to look after a parent who has Alzheimer’s. Besides, we all have to grow old, and who knows…?

I once knew someone with Alzheimer’s who had been an English teacher and always loved poetry. Now and then in the later stages of the disease, she would come out with a very apt line or even a whole verse from a poem she’d once been able to recite by heart. So great an impression had some poems and events made on her that even the darker mists of memory failed to engulf them completely.

This poem is a villanelle, was inspired by people like my late friend and also the author Sir Terry Pratchett; indeed, all families/carers, some whom I have known personally, that have experienced or are experiencing the truly heartbreaking task of watching their loved ones' mental faculties slowly winding down. 

HARVESTING IMAGINATION

Wheels of the mind winding down;
though time play fast and loose with us,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination

A smile but lost its way in a frown
seeks sanctuary in Cinderella memories,
wheels of the mind winding down

Though dignity wear a faded gown
as it stumbles through a Hall of Mirrors,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination

A heart that wears love’s crown
keeps beauty in the folds of its favours,
wheels of the mind winding down

Love’s spirit unbowed, unbeaten,
turning the pages of life’s kinder stories,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination

Among spoils of battles lost and won,
pathways to peace for all benign ghosts;
wheels of the mind winding down,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination


Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

[Note: This poem first appeared in Ygdrasil, an online poetry journal, June 2010, and subsequently in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2010]