This past Saturday, the writer's group on campus here visited Ridgewood retirement center and delivered handmade Valentine's cards to all of the residents with a bible verse written on the inside about Jesus' love.
I didn't even have to look for Marxy! He was right there. He nodded that I could take his picture. I showed him what it looked like after I had taken it (oh the marvels of digital cameras), he looked right at me and nodded his approval :)
Marxy has Alzheimer's.
Being there with my camera, it made me think of the video Marx had made when he found out he had this disease. He did different workshops with residents at nursing homes and the one in the video he took photographs of the people and then also did a drawing of the photographs and hung them all up on a wall, like a gallery. The exercise was to help raise their self-esteem again and show them their beauty--many of the elderly had a negative opinion of themselves. I'll see what I can do to get that up here...
Although I did not go there with that same intent (we were delivering Valentine's! And it was fun!), I did take a few pictures.
They were so delighted to have us college students go and visit!
Here, they were creating rain-sticks out of toilet paper rolls and tin foil:
The woman standing is Jan, an assistant, and she's so good with them!
Giving Valentine Cards:
This lovely lady loved to sing. We told her she had a pretty voice, and this was the surprised look she gave us:
Austin, explaining the verse about Jesus:
This little lady was sweet--she asked for a copy of her picture.
-Amber Dawn
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