SONGS, CRAFTS AND CARE
Gathering Place supports sufferers of dementia and their families
It’s a bright fall morning, and joy is in the air.
In the church hall, the pianist pounds the keyboard and 40 voices — robust, if a little off-key — swell in chorus: “Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness ... We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.”
Then comes another hymn, a prayer and a rousing “Happy Birthday to You” tendered to the October birthday boys and girls, not one of whom is a day younger than 65.
This is a pre-Halloween party — apparent from the paper bats, grimacing jack-o’-lanterns and piles of cookies and candy corn, but one with a difference. It’s the monthly Gathering Place session at Spring’s Lakewood United Methodist Church.
Working with Houston nonprofit Interfaith Care Partners, Lakewood is one of almost 60 area churches and synagogues hosting the sessions for people with Alzheimer’s or other diseases that ravage the mind.
The free sessions provide companionship and a lighthearted moment for the cognitively impaired, so-called “care partners,” and a welcome respite for those responsible for their daily care.
“When our care partners come in, they are scared, depressed and unhappy,” said Frank Miller, one of three Lakewood parishioners overseeing the church’s program. “When they leave at the end of the day, most of them will be smiling and happy. The ones who take care of them come back kind of refreshed and relaxed to find the one they love happy.”
The Alzheimer pro- gram, said Interfaith Care Partners president John Burk, is an outgrowth of an earlier program, founded in 1985, to provide assistance to people suffering HIV infections.
Gathering Place was started seven years later, and, with about 1,700 volunteers, serves roughly 1,400 people in Harris and surrounding counties.
The sessions, typically lasting 3 ½ hours, feature singing, games, arts and crafts and a light lunch.
“It’s very much a participatory program,” Burk said. “There’s time for music. That’s a real stimulant for people — singing songs from their generation, sometimes hymns. They
perk right up. We try to have at least one volunteer — always the same volunteer — to work with each. We see a lot of friendships formed.”
With dozens of religious groups hosting the sessions, a Gathering Place takes place virtually every week. Program participants are allowed to attend as many as they wish.
“For a lot of our care partners and their caregivers, this can be a very scary time,” Burk said. “Gathering Place can give them a sense of community, a real sense of security in knowing others who are struggling with the same kind of diagnosis.” 90 forms of dementia
Most of the Gathering Place participants suffer mild or moderate levels of impairment, Burk said. At least 90 forms of dementia have been identified by medical researchers, with Alzeheimer’s Disease perhaps most prevalent.
The Alzheimer’s Association reports that more than 5 million Americans, most 65 or older, suffer from the disease. Almost one-third of those 85 or older are Alzheimer’s patients.
Dementia can devastate families.
For a spouse dementia can engender a “sense of loss and grief” lasting years, or decades, as a loved one progressively grows worse, said Interfaith Care Partners vice president Tom Breaux. “Continually, there’s a loss of things, the loss of the ability to remember, to relate to a loved one, to communicate,” he said. “It’s losing the one you’re married to, but the mind and spirit is dying in you as well.”
Often, responsibility for caring for the ill falls on adult children, who face the burden balancing such care with jobs and responsibility to their own households. Caring for the demented can be expensive, and often, family members faced with providing such care simply don’t know how to do so.
To ease the burden, Burk said, his nonprofit annually hosts multiple conferences for families dealing with such topics as long-term insurance, veterans benefits, skilled nursing options and how to manage difficult behaviors associated with the illness.
Tom Fisher, 92, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s seven years ago. He has attended Gathering Place sessions for three years, said his wife, Dorothy.
“He enjoys everything,” she said, adding that her husband attends nine of the sessions each month. “Today, there was an Elvis impersonator. Every church has some kind of entertainment.”
Fisher, an Air Force careerist who retired in 1969, “still has some cognitive function,” his wife said.
Still, coping with the disease has been daunting.
Dorothy Fisher, 82, is being treated for cancer, and the family is strained to pay for professional nursing care for her husband. “We can’t afford that, so I have to do it myself,” she said.
“Thank goodness for the gatherings,” she said. “That and going to church on Sunday are the only places we go. With every other disease, you can pray they will be healed. With Alzheimer’s, the only thing that happens is that they go down. You lose hope. The only thing you have to lean on is faith in God and other people. That’s why these gatherings are so important.” ‘Lots of glue’
At the day’s Lakewood session, the singing is finished and participants and their volunteer helpers are digging into plates of chocolate chip cookies and planning the morning’s projects.
At the top of the list is decorating a glass vase with colorful paper leaves — a tribute to the season — and adorning a smiling plastic bat with stick-on images of witches, skulls and goblins.
Gathering participant Aletta Estefan is being assisted by Lakewood members Joanne Buerkert and Maurine Wright.
“First, we’ll put on the glue, lots of glue,” Buerkert says as she slathers the vase with opaque paste. Estefan watches, but says nothing.
Wright begins to muse on the art of decorating bats with stickers. “Just like kindergarten,” she says. “We’ll stick them wherever we want them.”
Estefan, silent still, peels and places the stickers. Then, painstakingly, she inserts a pair of wobbly plastic eyes.
“Look, on its back it says ‘Happy Halloween,’ ” Wright says. Then, pointing to a sticker of a black cat, she adds, “Look! The eyes are trying to look down on the cat.”
Estefan critically assesses her handiwork, then breaks into melodious, girlish laughter.