It's the last day of 2009 (at least it was when I started this), which means many things are coming to a close. It's the end of the holiday season, the end of the decade, (almost) the end of winter break. But it's also the beginning of many new things, the new year always seems like the time that people make new plans, turning over new leaves. Many people see new year's eve as a time to start making new memories, new plans, to become that person they didn't become in 2009.
With the new year, the stress is put on new. New memories, new friends, new workout, new study habits, new resolutions, new, new, new... Now I'm all for making new year's resolutions, I've even made them every new year. Naturally, they never last longer than a few weeks, then I'm back to my old habits that I was trying to change.
This year, however I have a different kind of new year resolution, which I realized about a month ago. When I was in my Clinical Integration rotation we were at an assisted living facility, which also had a memory support unit (among other things) where I spent most of my time. The memory support unit consisted of older adults who had symptoms of dementia (or memory loss) and early signs of Alzheimer's. There were about 25 adults living in this unit, and no two had the same amount of memory loss. Now, I think I said that this rotation was all about communication, so I literally just found someone who wanted to talk and had a conversation with them. These conversations ranged anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours. As expected I spent over half the conversation answering the exact same question over and over again, but it was a conversations nevertheless. And was in these repetitive conversations that I realized perhaps my most important lesson of the semester, which I'm not even sure if I can place it into words. I'll try my best though...
Talking to these amazing people, I realized that perhaps one of the worst things that could ever happen to a person is to loose your memory. In my mind, life pretty much boils down to making memories- so what happens when no longer remember them? What happens when you slowly forget your life? So my new year's resolution this year is to REMEMBER. And to do everything I can for myself so that down the line I will still remember. If that means taking more pictures, becoming healthier, or even starting a journal- I'm down. I want to square myself away now so that when times come where I might not remember everything, I have something to look back on that will remind me, and bring back those memories and those emotions- if even for a short while. I want to do as much as I can now, so that when I can't anymore I won't look back and wish that I had been more involved, or had been better friend, or even had more fun. But another part of this is living a healthy lifestyle, because in my mind being healthy now means that I'll be healthier later on in life, which makes a world of difference in the older adult's world (as I'm learning now).
I want to remember, and not just the big things that happen, I want to remember all the little things to because as the saying goes:
"it's all the little things that make a world of difference."
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