Playing a Priest

 

 

              When I lived with my mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, I used to play an original game with my mother. I named it “playing a priest.”

              Caregiving for an Alzheimer’s disease patient is very hard. I needed to take care of my mother. People who were the same age as me were enjoying life. They could enjoy jobs, hobbies, and normal home lives. I was almost a shut-in. I needed to spend much time with my mother, who couldn’t even communicate with me. When I thought about my life, it made my mind blue. I was wasting my life.

              Then I invented the “playing a priest” game.

              I was trying to assume that I was not taking care of my mother. I tried to assume that I was a priest in a shrine. The shrine enshrined this kind of goddess. Japanese Shinto deities are more like Greek myths. Sometimes they might make trouble. Japanese priests are always calm and graceful. I always spoke the most polite words to my mother because I was a priest who worked for a goddess.

              This is a good way to treat an Alzheimer’s patient. If the caregivers use polite words, the patients tend to be calm. It was useful for my anger management. I was a priest. A priest never gets angry at a goddess. The goddess makes many troubles, but the priest accepts all of them.

              One day my mother was returned from a day service and saw our house. She spoke. “Where is here? Is this a shrine?”

              I didn’t mention that I had been playing a priest in front of my mother, but somehow she felt that our house had the atmosphere of a shrine.

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Picture by Shintako