Still Life with Alzheimers

In the stoneflower garden of the mind

Dear fellow writer,

My meditations last week on gardenly grammar — garden as noun, verb, and adjective — got me thinking about mythical and metaphorical gardens: the garden of Eden, the Garden of Forking Paths, the garden of the mind.

The German Romantic poet Jean Paul famously wrote that “Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven.” But Jean Paul was wrong. Memory is a fickle Eden, a garden full of unexpected exits both divine and demonic.

More than a decade ago, I wrote a three-part poem called “Still Life with Alzheimers” as a way of making sense of what was happening in my mother’s brain — and my own heart — as I watched her short-term memory loss bloom into full-blown dementia. In the later years of her disease, when she could no longer recall what she had eaten for lunch that day, she could still describe the blue flowers painted on her family’s Depression-era china. Those ceramic flowers became part of the stoneflower path that wends its way through the poem, a permanent memorial to the impermanence of memory.

It’s a privilege to share my hitherto unpublished poem with you, here in my paywalled garden of love and trust.

At the end of the poem, you’ll find a short sequence of writing prompts for designing your own poetic garden of remembrance. Not a poet? You can adapt those prompts to freewrite about any topic that involves a challenging transition: starting a new research project, negotiating with a stubborn co-author, responding to a negative peer review. The language of metaphor will help you surface unspoken emotions and discover things you didn’t know you know.

Still Life with Alzheimers

1. in the garden of your mind
   
   the jasmine vine
   trails its sweet scent
   summer and winter
   the hummingbird always
   sips from the same cup
   and the full moon stares
   night after night
   at a tideless ocean
   that has already tossed you
   every seashell
   it will ever give up

---

2. the stoneflower path
   
   zigzags from the bay
   to the kauri cottage
   in a country far away
   where your daughter grouts
   a hard green cross
   between the brick boxes
   of her potager
   and lays a wreath
   of smashed souvenirs
   to mark the border
   where clay meets clay

---

3. at the end of the path
   
   the whitest flowers bloom
   from the plates you stored in
   the walnut chiffarobe
   of your childhood: each blank
   expectant face ringed by
   a penumbra of hand-
   painted blossoms blue as
   your forget-me-not eyes
   your starry memories
   crazing now to silence
   and bedded down in stone
   in homage to the lost arts
   of fire and bone

The Garden of Metaphor

Here’s a sequence of writing prompts that you can use to process your feelings about a person you miss, a transition you’re facing, or any other challenging situation. The “you” addressed in the opening line may be a real person, an imagined character, or even you (a useful rhetorical device for distancing yourself from your own subjectivity).

Start by writing each prompt at the top of a blank notebook page, then keep your pen moving to find out where your words carry you: a poem, a letter, a mind map, a drawing, a prose fragment, a song?

1. In the garden of your _______ . . .
   

   [What does the garden represent: a person’s mind, heart, brain, body, soul? What grows there, or fails to grow?]

2. The ________ path . . .
   
   [What kind of path leads into or through the garden? What materials is it made of? What route does it follow?]

3. At the end of the path . . .
   
   [Where does the path take you — or not?]

I’d love to hear what words, ideas, and emotions you discover in your garden of metaphor. Please leave a comment at the bottom of this page, or at least plant a heart.

Kia pai tō koutou rā (have a great day) – and keep on writing!

Helen