Graciousness

"Graciousness of heart shows up as flexibility, spaciousness and a "live and let live" attitude." Dr. Joan Borysenko

A good definition of graciousness, and a worthy goal for anyone, but since it is the title of this blog:  a special challenge for those of us who live with dementia.  Amazingly difficult, sometimes rewarding, often challenging, sometimes touching:  living with dementia.  Can we meet this challenge graciously?  Can we be flexible, spacious and live and let live?   As humans, probably sometimes we can and sometimes we cannot.  It probably also depends on how lucid the care receiver is, or conversely how paranoid and belligerent.  It must be hard to have dementia, and a minister recently said to me how much compassion he had for the person with dementia, as he feared dementia himself.  It is fine to have compassion for the person with dementia, but not at the expense of having compassion for the caregiver.  The person with dementia certainly has frustration, anxiety, feelings of frustrations as he/she is unable to do what used to be easy.  But.  It is the caregiver who carries the responsibility, the knowing that things are very, very different, the burden of making all the very difficult decisions.  What is appropriate is to have compassion for both caregiver and care receiver.