When Sparkler Moments Happen

Remember childhood 4th of July celebrations where we ran about the yard waving lighted sparklers, watching the play of brilliant light against a summer twilight? The caution against burning ourselves juxtaposed against our brief joy of racing with bright lights. We were fixed in the moment. Then the time came when the sparkler in your hand finally ran down to sputter out those last few arcs of light before the warm darkness closed around us again.

Caregiving also has its moments of brief brilliant light, full of joy, and with a definitive closure at the end. Wondrous to experience. Bittersweet to remember.

When caring for someone with dementia, so much of our time is centered on practical matters. Organizing, deciding, and probably above all else, worrying that we missed something. Then along comes a brief moment that takes your breath away. That moment when our loved one returns to a lucid version of their old self. Lucidity may last moments, hours, or even days but it eventually goes away. Medicine has noted these types of events but there is so far no explanation for how or why the amazing moments occur.

During his final years, Dad would replay old conversations he had had when he was younger. I recognized many of the stories because I had been a part of them. Though we had had these conversations before, they seemed to give him a sense of place and being. They didn’t seem to be so much nostalgia as they were something more earnest, something more immediate. My sense was that he knew that something was missing. Something was wrong. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Going back to old conversations gave him a sense of security. Something familiar to call his own as life seemed to be moving just out of his grasp.

Dad, for a large part of his life, worked as an Episcopal priest. During my childhood and adolescence, I played the role of dutiful acolyte, so I listened to most of his sermons. While he had a large repertoire of topics, inevitably he would repeat sermons over the years.

In a similar fashion as he had repeated sermons before, he now repeated the old conversations but bits and pieces of the stories began to escape him and the retelling sometimes became troubling.

Then every once in a while, the conversation changed. No longer was he working from his spotty memories. He was back in the moment of our conversation. With the sparkle back in his eyes and an energy long missing from his voice, Dad was engaged in conversation once again.

Dad’s back!

These changes would last just a short while and then be gone. But while they were there, our conversations were wondrous! I don’t know that the people around us ever tumbled to the brief change but Dad and I connected again in these moments. I can only hope he felt the moment too. And as unpredictably as the moments had arrived, they would go.

Should one of these wondrous sparkler moments arrive for you, and I sincerely hope you experience many, enjoy it for what it is. For as bright as these moments may be, things will return to the way they were. Engage and be in that moment. If you haven’t already, say the things you’ve been meaning to say. Both of you have been given a gift of the moment. It is up to you what you do with it.

Afterwards, cherish the memory of these times of clarity for memories are all we will have. Like so much in caregiving, it is up to us to work with what we’ve got. Even the miracles that happen along the way.