Being Flexible in Life

1. 

   "The hard and the stiff will be broken.  The soft and supple will prevail . . . . .Whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.  Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life."
    Lao-tzu
   
   

   As caregivers it is important for us to be structured, but flexible.  Nowadays when I see my loved one, I never know who I will meet.  Sometimes there are glimpses of lucidity, but, more and more, he lives almost entirely in a hallucinated world.  I try to have normal conversations with him, and he can sometimes respond -- but just as often he will be focused on and talk about the things he sees that I cannot see -- the water on his floor that I see as a rug, the empty grass outside his window where he sees a boy riding a bike and I see just grass.  I try to imagine what it must be like to experience such an intense alternative reality, but, of course, I cannot imagine what it is like.  So I listen and try to comfort and reassure him as I can.