This is a beautiful story about words and an idea for those of us who have loved ones losing the ability to speak.
Alice Saunders had a close relationship with her father Arpiar Saunders. When Alice was in her 20s, her father started mixing up words — pina colada for pinata, for example. He was diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration, which can affect speech. “As his vocabulary shrank, Arpy would endlessly repeat the words he still had.” Eventually, “there were just two full phrases that her father could still say. One was ‘proud to be your dad,’ and the other was ‘I love you.'” Alice said: “I’d get voicemails sometimes that was just like, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you’ for five minutes straight. That’s what he could say at the end.” After her father died, Alice’s boyfriend gave her a flash drive of all of her father’s voicemails over the last year.
Perhaps those of us who have loved ones losing the ability to speak can find an idea here — record your family member speaking before their voice disappears. I have a few hand-written notes from my father that he made before he lost the ability to write; those are very precious to me.
The full article is available online. Plus there’s a six-minute audio story that aired on June 13, 2017 on WBUR (Boston) at the link:
www.wbur.org/kindworld/2017/06/13/kind-world-39-dying-words
Kind World #39: Dying Words
June 13, 2017
WBUR
by Erika Lantz
Robin