The first site that we worked at was a geriatric day care called Downtown Cluster. Downtown Cluster was formed around 20 years ago when the local church saw that the elderly in DC were being neglected. This site is wonderful, and provides entertainment, activities and workshops to Senior Citizens who daily attend their program.
One of the unique parts of Downtown Cluster is that it has a special program called 'The A-Team' (kind of like the movie...but they claim to have had dibs first). The A-Team works with Senior Citizens enrolled with the Downtown Cluster who struggle with Alzheimers. They do simple tasks with them, in an attempt to stimulate their brains and temporarily fight off the disease. It doesn't work permanently. On Monday, our teams task was to simply engage the adults with Alzheimers in conversation and make puzzles with them.
While we were at Downtown Cluster, half of our group left with the A-Team to go to a separate room and work with these adults. I stayed in the main room with the other half. Even though I wasn't able to work with the A-Team hands on, I was still able to have a few casual conversations with them throughout the morning. It really helped me to understand the severity of Alzheimers. I understood the concept of a 10 minute memory as I watched one unfold in front of me.
It was also at Downtown Cluster that I had my big 'teaching moment' of the day. One of the students that we brought with us was named Aaron, and he's an unbelievable pianist. Downtown Cluster had a piano in their main room, and Aaron quickly become a fan-favorite as he played Mozart and Beethoven for the adults by memory. As we were leaving, there was a request that Aaron play one more song as the rest of the group sang along. The song that was requested as the hymn, "All Creatures of Our God and King."
As our group sang, and Aaron played the piano, I was all of a sudden amazed. One of the women on the A-Team, who I had seen clearly struggling with Alzheimers was able to recite every lyric to this hymn from the first word to the last. I got goosebumps all over my arms as I realized that this woman must have so embedded these lyrics into her memory, that despite a disease (literally) eating away her memory, she was able to recite this song as it played for her.
As I was walking out of Downtown Cluster, having watched this woman sing along to an old hymn, I was struck with a question. What is so important to me, and so embedded in my memory that, if I were to have Alzheimers, I would still be able to recall? There is no scientific explanation that I know of that can explain why this woman could remember the lyrics to a hymn when she couldn't recall what she ate for breakfast. The only explanation that I could come up with is that this song, and the meaning behind it, were so important to her, that she remembered.
That morning, I had read Phillipians 2 as my devotions. This is a passage that I read regularly throughout my last semester, and put a high value in. My challenge to myself after experiencing the Downtown Cluster is to take what I place as having 'high value' and to embed it so far into my memory, that if I were to be in the A-Team's position one day, I would still be able to recall a passage such as Phillipians 2...because it means that much to me :)
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