I love the American Public Radio show "Speaking of Faith."
Its host, Krista Tippett, is one of the best interviewers on the air. She knows enough about her thoughtful and inspiring guests to ask smart questions, but lets their voices anchor the show.
A subscriber email includes her blog about that week's guest, and links where listeners can learn more. This week, "Alzheimer's, Memory and Being" features Alan Dienstag, a psychologist who ran a writing group for Alzheimer's patients with novelist Don DeLillo.
In a long (but fascinating) essay, Dienstag admits he didn't at first see how any task that reminded patients of what they were losing could actually help them.
DeLillo, whose mother-in-law had Alzheimer's, managed to change his mind, he writes, by telling him, "Writing is a form of memory." It wasn't anything the psychologist had ever considered, but he soon witnessed the power his patients found in reclaiming, and saving, their own stories.
His observations about how they managed to do that, even as their own brains were closing down, will touch anyone who puts pen to paper, "to preserve in some form a record of who you are, who you were, and who you wanted to be in this world before it slips away."
The full essay can be found here:
SOF: "Lessons from the Lifelines Writing Group for People in the Early Stages of Alzheimer's Disease: Forgetting That We Don't Remember" by Alan Dienstag | Alzheimer's, Memory, and Being
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