I remember so many times my grandfather and I were able to relax together. He had cultivated relaxation over nine decades. We relaxed in times when family was around, times of abundant joy, times when just the two of us were doing something. One particularly clear example comes to mind. When I was a youth in middle school, I had rebelliously spoken to a teacher very disrespectfully and insulted her. The dean suspended me from school. My grandparents graciously took on my discipline as their project because my parents needed to go to work.
As a consequence for my disrespectful actions and suspension, my grandma and grandpa put me to work. They told me that I would be working hard while I was at their house. My grandpa was an educator himself and felt strongly that I needed moral correction. I felt guilty enough about my behavior to be open to their correction and I trusted them, even though I showed a calculated disdain for the dean’s punishment and my need to be accountable for my actions to my parents. I didn’t want to admit weakness or that I needed to give in to mom and dad.
What I found when my grandpa took me out in the garden-like and secluded back yard he so often mentioned at the end of his life was something closer to relaxation and peace. He gave me the task he wanted me to accomplish. He showed me the piece of ground near a small depression where they wanted to build a trellis for roses. Then he showed me the beautiful and fragrant red rose bushes he wanted to plant.
“You can’t come back in until you finish this,” he said as he left. As I worked, the thoughts and feelings of embarrassment, guilt, shame, and defiance started to lift and disappear. My focus on my task and my sensations of pain where my fingers and palms rubbed the wooden handles of the tools gave me a place to put my attention. I felt my heart rate increase, and I breathed heavily. I felt my pores open up and sweat dampened my clothes under the warm Florida sun in late spring. I felt at ease in my strain and effort.
I worked hard for two days and finished the project on the second day of my two-day suspension. And grandma and grandpa praised me for my hard work and diligence. They thanked me as we ate together after I finished and encouraged me to behave better. I returned home after the second day feeling lighter and calmer, ready to reengage in school with less anxiety.
At the end of his life, as I sat with grandpa and we talked or watched TV, I sometimes would lightly put my hand on his shoulder. When I would listen to him talk and sometimes fumble to find a word, I would feel the same sense of ease and connection with this man. I was thankful for him because he took on the burden of care for me, along with my grandma, when I was proving myself to be more than a handful for others responsible for my care.
And I could feel a sense of relaxation and connection with him, and I could perceive from his body language that he could feel a sense of relaxation with me and himself. I believe this attuned relaxation came from the many ways that he had cultivated calm in me and himself through the years. When I visit persons at the end of their lives who live in long-term care facilities, memory care units, or assisted living homes, I often remember this way of being at ease with myself and my grandpa as my way to engage in care. It comes to me as a bodily feeling of openness.
I do it implicitly without ever naming it to myself or them. I slowly breathe in and breathe out, settle into the moment and connect in whatever way that I can with them. I try to let the calm of my body offer them an anchoring point where they can feel calm. With the presence of my calm body, I invite them to let go of what might be agitating or distressing them and relax into the moment of experience rising up for them in their body. It doesn’t always work that the people living with dementia I visit can anchor themselves in their own calm body by attuning to my calm, but often they can.
