To be in the present with the ladies and gentlemen, engaging in the possibility of the living moment is the aim of our visits and to achieve that is the ultimate joy of this work.
So, while Clowndoctoring with kids can be a great release of high-energy and daftness trying to be as stupid as possible and definitely appearing less intelligent than the child in their hospital bed, a lot more subtlety is required working as an Elderflower-Family member. Working with mature adults, whom might easily be in the 8th or 9th decade of their life, one must be aware that they generally have a very different outlook and approach to their existence than an 8-year-old child.
In a dementia unit we might encounter the ladies and gentlemen sitting at a table for long periods in front of a newspaper or a magazine, slowly eating a meal, drinking a cup of tea, or watching television. Or perhaps they’re walking purposefully up and down the corridors engaged in some activity in their head or simply trying to keep moving. It is up to us to find a way through their immediate concerns or distractions and find a meaningful engagement with them in a manner that is gentle and appropriate to them in that moment. This might be simply catching their attention with an introduction or a comment about their dress, or perhaps by getting ourselves into their eye-line and, by using a prop that we might have with us or something in the space itself, create a disruption, not in a loud or big way but just big enough to distract them so that they might become curious or interested enough to stop what they’re doing for a few moments and engage in a simple human interaction the sort of which we all take for granted most of the time but which for a person living with dementia a seemingly normal and tiny event like this might be very unusual and therefore could actually be quite meaningful in their life at that moment, perhaps even developing into something bigger where they forget themselves for a moment becoming more animated and possibly even creatively joining in with a chat or a song or a dance. To be in the present with the ladies and gentlemen, engaging in the possibility of the living moment is the aim of our visits and to achieve that is the ultimate joy of this work.
On one occasion I remember knocking on a resident’s door during a time when they were having a quiet game of cards with a visitor of theirs. Initially the lady might not have been too interested in having Buddy and his sister Bonnie come into her room and disturb her game but after we politely introduced ourselves and asked if we might come in for a few minutes she relaxed and invited us to enter, which we did, respectfully and calmly taking a seat (without making a noisy commotion in the way Dr. Cous Cous and Dr. Maybee might after being invited into a child’s hospital room…). We were then invited to play a couple of rounds of cards with them, with the lady being able to instruct us in the rules of how to play and a gentle clowning silliness was able to emerge around the playing of the card-game. This play was silly enough to be amusing but not so silly that the lady got annoyed at us or exasperated by us for being deliberately stupid. This fine-line is one which we constantly have to negotiate as an Elderflower because although the ladies and gentlemen may have memory-issues and/or their voice or physical movement might be severely curtailed, they certainly haven’t been made stupid by their condition and therefore they will be able to see through any attempt by us to be more foolish than is reasonable or expectable and for which they might well call us out on for being patronising and to please leave them alone. On this occasion we managed to play some cards and engage in a gentle conversation with our referral and her guest giving them a normal human interaction, albeit one with a couple of smartly and vintage-dressed clowns which in itself is perhaps not so every day, and which therefore is potentially more memorable and enjoyable for them and for us too.
Such beautiful and simple engagements, that we as Elderflowers are given the privilege of being able to have with ladies and gentlemen in their care-homes is an absolute pleasure, and because such life-affirming and joyous moments like this are as good as anything that I get in any of my performance related work I really never grow tired of the job nor do I ever take it for granted.
Colin Moncrieff
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