A few weeks ago, a member of a geriatric facility who had heard of the work I do, having read my book “When Words have Lost Their Meaning: Alzheimer’s Patients Communicate Through Art,” contacted me for some advice and to share an exciting moment. A ninety plus old lady with medium dementia had been in the facility for some months, behaving with extreme passivity, total lack of interest in activities, and obvious depression. Then someone brought a catalogue of famous people, containing brightly colored photographs. The old lady found a pencil and began to draw one of these faces with great skill, concentration and determination. Thus started a series of pictures to which she devotes herself three times a week. She is enormously proud and while she has little language capacity, her pleasure and engagement in the process is palpable. Who would have thought that this sad lady, given pencils and paper, would reveal skills and capacities that no one had dreamed of. And how many more of them are there. With therapeutic and artistic skills, one can open up hours of pleasure and confirmation of continuing humanity. And if not hours, maybe half hours, or quarter hours. We owe it to them to find a way, and art and expression through art, is one of the ways.
Ruth Abraham
