Jed Wolf

An old friend texted me saying she was hurt by a recent post admitting my “boredom” lately with people and friendships. Forged young and desperate in boarding school, our mutual traumas were solid ground for an uncommon bond that’s lasted fifty years, so I apologized, then delved in further, hoping I wouldn’t make things worse.

I said though I love my friends, lately friendships weren’t enough. I told her I needed to share unadulterated, simple love more frequently, with more people – less forged and fraught in histories than friends provide, to fill a vacancy in my soul.

After decades of trying, I’m at a point where I know I’m not going to get what I need from friends, phone calls, visits, travel, shopping, Buddha or even my cats and expecting my husband and I to fix one another’s dysphoria is also fantasy. We’ve tried.

I used to stare out my window as a kid, at the neighborhood below, bursting with activity thinking everyone looked and acted like zombies. It didn’t take long to be called one myself, languishing in my room for long periods, but after a lifetime believing there was something seriously wrong with me, I fear I was right all along.

And now it’s too late to be foolish, desperate, or high enough to make additional close friends. I’m normal enough to bond with nice, new folks over shared problems, addictions, hobbies and obsessions but it’s a boring cold comfort to simply know I’m not alone.

To remain interested and counter apathy, I turn on the charm, fling open my heart and risk sending wrong signals wherever I go. But talking to strangers at Walmart barely helps as does writing, gardening or taking a break from fence-building to write this. Dodging advice, I meditate, talk, walk, read, work and watch Netflicks to avoid feeling lost.

Yet I can’t help notice from years of singing for people with dementia in assisted living facilities, how little else they require but love. Love must be in everything they experience or they might freak out. From long lives experiencing other human beings, despite dementia, they read minds. As expert barometers, chameleons and mimics, they’re easily re-directed but sadly are likely to be abused in one way or another over time in most places. When they can’t make sense, become inconsolable and/or flail, they’re often medicated.

These days with corporations building and buying up assisted living facilities everywhere, most are ill-equipped to manage much more than marketing and decor. When staff training, salaries and creativity suffer so does emotional care.

Meanwhile the rest of us, you and me are being prepared like cattle, starved and indoctrinated by the slow drip of contemporary life to follow them. With no other choice but aging this way, we’re imperceptibly lining up, hiding our hearts and suicide plans, preparing for the worst. Rather than being cherished, our experience and wisdom will be ignored then shunned. Without a sacrificing family to take us in to die in front of, our best hope is to be pickled for profit in tasteful surroundings.

Singing monthly in these gilded barracks, I befriend flagging staff and lowly aids with my ebullient charm and dance moves but rarely see the same aids twice. Never in a million years would I consider wiping asses for minimum wage, but it would be a Hell of a lot easier on those that do if parades of zombies, kids, pets or other members of surrounding communities consistently showed up to give exhausted staff breaks. Someone like me can keep a room of thirty residents mesmerized for an hour, as can dancers, painters, actors and poets but profits suffer in too much joyful light.

I used to think helping brain damaged folks was a form of service, like a saintly or guilt-ridden duty until I did it. Since then I’ve learned just the opposite. I do it for me. I’m grateful for their unadulterated love and acceptance. We trade hearts and in doing so, I’m given what I miss in contemporary society. I offer my talents to the needy and damaged in order to sooth my soul.

Why isn’t spending time with people with dementia considered viable psychotherapy? Shouldn’t it be required to combat complacency and behavioral issues in high school? Why do we hide our sages, our purest, simplest most deserving segment of society away, instead of integrating them to solve society’s malaise?

I’d always felt a bit tired after an hour of kneeling, holding hands, dancing and singing, yet calmer and slightly wiser each time like a bear after visiting a familiar honey tree in his home woods but lately, being a touch of sweetness in the belly of this enormous beast is making me furious.