Chapter XXII from Derek Walcott's Caribbean Epic, Omeros

Dove sta memoria?

I was reminded of the following section of his epic poem Omeros after being introduced to this video of a connection opening temporarily between an elderly woman incapacitated by Alzheimer's Disease and a caregiver trying to reach her and evoke the inner person, howbeit briefly.

The poet Derek Walcott encountered a similar situation, and presents it in chapter XXXII of his masterpiece:

Omeros

by Derek Walcott

Chapter XXXII

I

She floated so lightly! One hand, frail as a swift,

gripping the verandah. The cotton halo fanned

from her shrunken crown, and I felt that I could lift

that fledgling, my mother, in the cup of my hand

and settle her somewhere else: away from the aged

women rubbing rosaries in the Marian Home,

but I was resigned like them. I no longer raged

at the humiliations of time. Her turn had come

to be bent by its weight, its indifferent process

that drummed in wrist and shank. Time was that fearful friend

they talked to, who sat beside them in empty chairs,

as deaf as they were; who sometimes simply listened.

They were all withdrawn. They'd entered a dimension

where every single thought was weightless, every form clouded

by its ephemeral halo. Time's intention

rather than death was what baffled them; in the deed

of dying there was terror, but what did time mean,

after some friend stopped talking and around her bed

they opened the panels of an unfolding screen?

The frail hair grew lovelier on my mother's head,

but when my arm rested on her hollow shoulder

it staggered slightly from the solicitous weight.

I was both father and son. I was as old as her

exhausted prayer, as her wisps of memory floated

with a vague patience, telling her body: “Wait,”

when all that brightness had withered like memory's flower,

like the allamanda's bells and the pale lilac

bougainvillea vines that had covered our gabled house.

They, like her natural memory, would not come back.

Her eyes were dim as dusk. There were no more hours.

From her cupped sleep, she wavered with recognition.

I would bring my face closer to hers and catch the

scent of her age. “Who am I? Mama, I'm your son.”

“My son.” She nodded. “You have two, and a daughter.

And a lot of grandchildren,” I shouted. “A lot to

remember.” “A lot.” She nodded, as she fought her

memory. “Sometimes I ask myself who I am.”

We looked at the hills together, at roofs that I knew

in childhood. “Their names are Derek, Roddy, and Pam.”

“I have to go back to the States again.”

“Well, we can't be together all the time,” she said, “I know.”

“There is too much absence,” I said. Then a blessed

lucidity broke through a cloud. She smiled. “I know

who you are. You are my son.” “Warwick's son,” she said.“Nature's gentleman.” His vine-leaves haloed her now.