Barrett Dorko
17-01-2008, 03:13 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
It’s been exactly eleven years since my mother’s passing but closer to twenty since she knew me. I was nearby and visited often, witnessing her descent into Alzheimer’s as I watched my own children blossom and learn. Bouncing between their performance and my mother’s increasing stillness I learned to live in a sort of emotional middle, taking care not to grow too animated about any change. Now I realize that the certainty of my mother’s disappearance offered a kind of comfort, if only because I didn’t have to prepare for any surprises.
I was writing a column for some print media back then and recently came across what I had put down the morning of her funeral. I described how I had filled the trunk of my car with the beautiful books left behind on the shelves of my boyhood home. Many were quite old and ornately bound and they occupied the waiting room of my practice for the next decade. She’d read them all, and her bearing and thoughtful manner always reflected that, even long after she could speak of them no longer. Eventually, that disappeared too.
Early in the process of her leaving, Peg Dorko grew animated in a way I’d not seen before. She’d sit quietly with a distant expression while tapping the fingers of her hands upon her knees, her head faintly bobbing in rhythm to a tune only she could hear. I eventually came to understand that this movement – unique, comforting, therapeutic and countercultural – was a pure expression of ideomotion. I also learned that this was the last gift she would offer me. Using it for my patients and explaining that to others was my job from then on, and I’m still looking for new ways to do it. I find it impossible to speak of ithe origins of my discovery in public, but I’ve written about it ( http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/piano.htm) a number of times. Again today.
From my increasingly distant perspective I can see how the gentle and precise use of her hands in the service of her unconscious and our culture’s insidious but adamant rejection of so strange a thing would lead me toward a kind of care that has defined me. All I needed to do was to find a patient who needed it, and then I discovered that I was surrounded by them.
Today I’m thinking about all of that. I may never understand it completely but in mid-January every year I feel it acutely.
It’s been exactly eleven years since my mother’s passing but closer to twenty since she knew me. I was nearby and visited often, witnessing her descent into Alzheimer’s as I watched my own children blossom and learn. Bouncing between their performance and my mother’s increasing stillness I learned to live in a sort of emotional middle, taking care not to grow too animated about any change. Now I realize that the certainty of my mother’s disappearance offered a kind of comfort, if only because I didn’t have to prepare for any surprises.
I was writing a column for some print media back then and recently came across what I had put down the morning of her funeral. I described how I had filled the trunk of my car with the beautiful books left behind on the shelves of my boyhood home. Many were quite old and ornately bound and they occupied the waiting room of my practice for the next decade. She’d read them all, and her bearing and thoughtful manner always reflected that, even long after she could speak of them no longer. Eventually, that disappeared too.
Early in the process of her leaving, Peg Dorko grew animated in a way I’d not seen before. She’d sit quietly with a distant expression while tapping the fingers of her hands upon her knees, her head faintly bobbing in rhythm to a tune only she could hear. I eventually came to understand that this movement – unique, comforting, therapeutic and countercultural – was a pure expression of ideomotion. I also learned that this was the last gift she would offer me. Using it for my patients and explaining that to others was my job from then on, and I’m still looking for new ways to do it. I find it impossible to speak of ithe origins of my discovery in public, but I’ve written about it ( http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/piano.htm) a number of times. Again today.
From my increasingly distant perspective I can see how the gentle and precise use of her hands in the service of her unconscious and our culture’s insidious but adamant rejection of so strange a thing would lead me toward a kind of care that has defined me. All I needed to do was to find a patient who needed it, and then I discovered that I was surrounded by them.
Today I’m thinking about all of that. I may never understand it completely but in mid-January every year I feel it acutely.