When people walked or ran by, Ian would directly and loudly confront them. "Who are you?" he would say. "Where are you going?" Some people were taken aback. Others recognized the dementia within him and responded kindly and carefully. Perhaps they had relatives with dementia. Those who didn't were either defensive, explaining their right to be in the neighborhood, or worried that someone would confront them so directly. I tried not to interfere. He was showing the natural curiosity we humans have about other people where they are from, what is their motivation, where are they going, what are they doing. These were his questions about everyone we met, and his questions about the houses and what was happening inside them. Nothing drew his attention more than other people not trees, not squirrels, not houses, not cars, not airplanes, though he noticed cars and planes, and wondered about the people inside those cars and planes.
He kept asking me where I was from, equally surprised at each answer that I was from the United States. Where did you come from? I kept answering him that I had driven there from Buffalo, New York, since that was where I had been working during the week. He found that surprisingly amazing.
At the end of the day, the earth is our ultimate mother, perhaps a better mother than our own mothers. I remember a story about a friend coming upon a bear with cubs and freezing in her tracks, expecting the bear to maul her. The bear only breathed on the back of her nect and then moved away. Dementia had done more than breathe upon Ian. It had come to almost completely occupy his brain. Nevertheless, it contained mysterious teachings, messages from spirits, people that Ian could see when I could not. Now Ian was seeing and talking to spirits as if they were real people. My friend had remarked that previously he had held an obiesance to abstract Anglican Church spirits, but only as an abstract concept, not with genuine ontological status. Now his spirits and ghosts were more than real.
The message of the week is that we need to spend more time with those who are demented or psychotic, listening carefully to the teachings of their words. Throughout this week, my psychotic patients and my friend's demented father have given me great, mysterious teachings, so much more than I had expected, and so much more deeply connected to the Great Mysteries, the Spirits of the Land, and the ghosts that walk upon the earth. Perhaps dementia is really just a very slow passage into spirit world, for those who fear the sudden passage that would be thrust upon them
