Katura

Once a man, twice a child is a saying that I hear at least 20 times a day from my good friend, Katura Crew, or Kati as she likes to be referred to.
She is 87 and has Alzheimer's.
I have only known her a few days, but have known her a life time in the few days of listening to her. Her stories are jumbled, jumping from chapter to chapter in no particular order.
She repeats like it was the first time she told me, and to her it is the first time because she does
not recall saying it once or ten times before.
So I listen, nodding my head like it was something new that she has not told me before.
Yesterday she was back in Jamaica, where her and her husband built a house and retired. How great it was to sit on the porch and people watch. She notices that no one passes by here and stops by, but it's confusing because she is believing she is in Jamaica.
Next minute she is in London England where she raised her 6 kids and worked in a hospital taking care of old people.
When she gets up in the morning she has to be told what to do like get out of bed, go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, take a shower. {Sort of like a child} I dress her and fix her white coffee and then take her out to the patio to have her "puff puff" or smoke her pipe.
Yes, I've learned to shave her tobacco leaves, clean her pipe and stuff and light a pipe.
We count to 3 to help get her up on her feet to walk, as I pull and she lifts.
Mornings seem easier than afternoons, by the afternoon she has trouble walking and being coherent.
When she gets agitated and has anxiety because she realizes shes not in Jamaica or England, but in America with people she cannot remember, she will go into rambling emotional rantings of how she is in prison and we are trying to kill her, or someone stole her money out of her bag, or she has been kidnapped, or her kids with their filthy minds don't want to take care of her after all the work she did to raise them. This will go on for hours and she will cry and pray to God that she lives no longer and just get louder and louder.
She actually believes this as true at the moment so you can't argue with her it or it will make her more agitated, so you sympathize and try and change the subject to get her to calm down and get her mind away from those thoughts.
Much more to tell, but I'm tired and need to sleep. Check back again for more.