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No One Has Nothing to Tell (DrawingOut Older People in Nursing Homes toCommunicate From Their Own Lives)Anna Louise ArnottPublished online: 25 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Anna Louise Arnott (1985) No One Has Nothing to Tell (Drawing Out OlderPeople in Nursing Homes to Communicate From Their Own Lives), Activities, Adaptation & Aging,7:2, 77-86, DOI: 10.1300/J016v07n02_10

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J016v07n02_10

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No One Has Nothing to Tell (Drawing Out Older People

in Nursing Homes to Communicate From Their Lives)

Anna Louise Arnott

In my visits to nursing homes as a poet and performer, I have concentrated not on readkg and dramaiizing poems, but on sharing my view of how a poem begins. I believe that it begins with sensory awareness.

By increasing or awakening sensory awareness in the patients, I encourage them to tell incidents and feelings from their lives. In other words, I am drawing out their own poetical material.

But my purpose is not to teach the writing of poetry, but to in- crease communication and to kindle a sense of the importance of each life.

Although I have made single visits (giving a poetry performance and encouraging participation) in New York, California and New Jersey, in this paper I will deal with my experiences in one nursing home, The White House Nursing Home in Orange, New Jersey. Here, I have been invited by the activities director, Judy Berkowitz, to visit every two weeks. Consequently, I have been able to develop a program and to observe progress.

It is generally known that nursing homes are depressing places for patient and visitor. Robert Butler (Why Survive? 1975) gives a de- tailed description of the situation.

In recent years much has been done with the hope of combatting or preventing the patient's withdrawal from life. Some of the proj- ects are beneficial, others mere time-fillers. Crafts, taught weekly or daily (in a few nursing homes), make for pride of accomplish- ment for those who like this activity. Volunteer performances by a group of musicians or a single artist give pleasure and satisfy a hunger for beauty. Films are shown, but often they don't hold the

Aclivities, Adaptation & Aging. Vol. 7(2). October 1985 O 1985 by The Hawonh Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 77

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78 ACTIVITIES. ADAPTATION & AGING

viewer's interest. Since budgets are tight, nursing homes usually rent old, poorly produced movies with long, complicated stories. In most homes the T.V. is turned on constantly, no matter what the program. I have watched patients, sitting in the lounge in their wheel chairs, close their eyes to the flickering screen.

On the other hand, a few artists are conducting classes that pro- duce remarkable results. Here I am thinking of Kenneth Koch's very successful class on writing poetry. (I Never Told Anybody, 1925).

To my knowledge no artist or volunteer artist has made, as I have, regular nursing home visits with the very simple but extreme- ly necessary aim to increase communication and a sense of value in individual lives. (See Working Papers, The Healing Role of the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, 1978.)

I have found that poetry is an especially appropriate medium for this.

1. Most poems can be read aloud in a short amount of time, thus fit into the shorter attention span of the old.

2. Poetry expresses feeling and awakens feelings in the listener. (Masefield's longing for the sea in "Sea Fever" began a discussion of childhood holidays at the beach and led to expressions of longings for home and family .)

3. A poet's use of rhythmic sound sets a mood for remembering. (After I read Tennyson's "Bugle Song" several patients described places where they had heard echoes.)

4. Some poems encourage philosophical thinking. The "echo talk" from "Bugle Song" expanded to thoughts that our lives echoed in those of our grandchildren. I suggested that everything we did had importance, even sharing our thinking and experience here, and read my theme poem from my book, From One to Another:

Cast a stone, form a ring. For anything expressed becomes a greater thing.

(In this discussion I am using a technique similar to Eli Greifer's and J. J. Leedy's more recent methods.)

5. Many enjoy poetry because it is familiar to them. As children,

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Anna Louise Arnon 79

older people have been read to, and taught to learn by heart. Often, while I read, I see lips moving, saying some of the words, and after several meetings, certain individuals ask to recite poems they remember. One woman recited all of Polonias' speech to Laertes from "Hamlet", another Wordsworth's "Daffodils", and still another favorite psalms.

I will now describe my first day at the White House Nursing Home.

The patients (20-30 people) are seated, the majority in wheel chairs, in a double semi-circle. I arrange a display table. (This may be a table with a good sized tray on it or a table on wheels.) My dis- play consists of an apple, a stone, a fur-lined man's glove, a large baby doll, a candle and a cow bell. I explain that from objects like these poets get their ideas and these objects, too, help us remember parts of our lives.

I read three poems from my book, From One to Another. (Naturally other poems that seem to be inspired by objects can be used.) I read one about a stone, one about a baby, one about a hand. Each time I tell how the poem started. (When I use poems of other authors I imagine how they start.) I found the stone in the noon sun on the beach, I tell them, the "Thank You Note To The New Baby" was written shortly after the birth of my daughter, the hand poem at a time when I needed help from another person. To intensify inter- est, I act out the poem as I read. I pretend to walk the beach, bend to pick up the stone. I cradle the doll in my arms. I reach for a patient's hand.

I then move in between the wheel chairs with my tray or my table on wheels. I ask the patient to pick up an object, look at it, feel it, smell it, taste it, if he wishes, and sound it if he chooses the bell. I ask questions: "As you smell the apple, do you remember some- body who gave you an apple when you were little?" "Ring the bell and close your eyes. Are you in a different place?" "Slip your hand into the glove. What do you feel? Are you thinking of somebody?" "What does the candle remind you of?"

Some answer: "I'm in church", "I'm on my uncle's farm", (the bell) "I'm holding my dad's hand", (the glove) "Candlelight helps when I feel low", (the candle).

Others stare into space, saying nothing. I leave the apple with a vacant-expressioned woman. "Hold it, keep feeling it, smell it", I say. "You don't have to talk".

Another woman tells me "to mind my own business" when I

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80 ACTIVITIES, ADAPTATION & AGING

question her. "I know. how you feel'', I say. "You think I am pry- ing, don't you? You want to keep your thoughts to yourself." Here I am trying to understand her, not to judge her, hoping to have her change on a later day and participate. (Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers .)

Because I am using objects to recall scenes or events, particularly with those patients who are withdrawn, I was interested in Allen Ginsberg's talk at the Seventh World Poetry Therapy Conference April 20 and 21, 1979, given at the New School of Social Research, New York City, and directed by J. J. Leedy. Ginsberg told of his experience in a psychiatric hospital, when he had brought his own mind from wandering fantasies to reality by focusing on and describing a single object-an ashtray on the table or a tree branch at the window. This method can be used to bring a nursing home pa- tient out of apathy, at least temporarily.

For example, the woman with whom I'd left the apple called out at the end of the meeting, just as I was packing up my display. "The apple makes me afraid". In answer to my surprise that an apple could make anybody afraid, she told me the story that I repeat later in verse.

At this first meeting less than one third of the patients spoke. I had saved my loaf of bread for a later display table when we would dis- cuss home and family. If there is a loaf of bread on the tray, as there always is when I give a single reading, almost everyone makes some remark. "Is it home-made?" they ask. "I love home-made bread". "I make mine with raisins". "Do you use whole wheat flour?"

At one home, a woman wheeled her chair up to my table, lifted the napkin I'd thrown over the bread and started using the knife, placed beside it, to cut herself a piece.

That day before I talked or read, I was walking around the room, serving small pieces of bread (reminding me of a Christian cornrnu- nion.) One woman said, "The rising dough feels like the skin of your stomach when you're big with child".

Because my purpose at the White House Nursing Home is not only to encourage communication but to increase a patient's sense of importance, I return in two weeks with my own verse versions of some of their stories.

As I read them aloud I thank each one who has contributed an idea or incident and try to make remarks to individuals, such as, "You certainly kept me guessing about the apple and being afraid", or "Your thought of the candle is the way many of us feel about light".

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Anna Louise Arnorr

An Apple and I am Afraid

I see a red apple. I am a child again. One time I climbed an apple tree to pick a red apple- an apple-red against blue sky.

1 climbed down from the tree I bit into the red apple. I tasted sweet white juice.

A shadow fell-dark on my face. A body loomed in front of me. A hand snatched the apple from my hand. A hand slapped my face. I ran and ran. Today I am afraid of every angry man.

Candle Thought

No matter what's happened, and you feel low, no matter what's happened, alone, go into your room, light a candle, And as the light flicks up, no matter what's happened, something inside you flicks up too.

From now on my plan for each meeting consists of four steps.

1. Reading of verses from last week's patients' talk. 2. A new subject with some object display.

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82 ACTIVITIES, ADAPTAUON & AGING

3. Reading of poems on the subject, usually well known poetry or childhood poems. (See Bibliography)

4. I draw the patients out to talk.

I list here some of the other subjects discussed at later meetings and what was on the display table.

Subject Display Table

Fall

New

leaves, bittersweet

a man's shoe, an egg a clean sheet, a bud

Family members photographs "What he or she has given me"

Time passing a ticking clock an egg timer

Birthday mock cake and candle

The following six verses were formed from the patients' stories: (A man holding a dried leaf in his hand said this about the bird, the nest and the young.)

Old and New (Leaves)

Dry leaves crackle for they are old. A bird snatches a leaf from mold, and with the dead dried leaf she weaves a warmish bed, now, for her young. Among new leaves her song is sung.

(A woman holding a piece of bittersweet in her hand told that in her country, Alsace Lorraine, they always wove bittersweet into the bridal wreath.)

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Anna Louise Amorr

A Woman For Her Daughter's Wedding

What may come my child, words cannot convey. I pleat your bridal wreath In between the bloom of flowers, I tuck the berry, bittersweet.

(A woman from the Caribbean Islands said these exact words as she held the egg.)

Egg Beat an egg stiff. It is like the lift of windjammer sails in white light.

(A man's reaction to the new shoe.)

Shoe When I was small of new shoes, I was proud. Now I don't care for them at all. They pinch my toes. Slippers are cozy. an old man knows.

(A woman born without legs who grew up dependent on her mother is a helpful friend to another patient)

My Mother We sang songs together. We ate meals together. We rode trains together. We slept in the same room. And now my mother is not here. Yet I still have her love to give another who stands crying near.

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ACTIVITIES. ADAPTAUON & AGING

The Gardener

I have nothing to say except there was a day I had a dad. "And what did he give you? you ask. He gave to me the task of weeding the flow'r bed. To plant seeds, he taught me, to water earth around a tree. I had a dad. My life work he gave me.

I will record the eighth meeting in more detail. We gave a birth- day party for the activities director. Although this was a by-product of my poetry meetings, I feel that it was a small dramatization of some of my goals.

When we discussed birthdays the time before, the patients spoke of parties, flowers, presents. Birthdays seemed to recall happy memories.

As in most nursing homes, this home gives a party each month for all those having birthdays that month. The management provides entertainment, refreshments and a gift for each "birthday child" (one for men and one for women). The patients like to be honored, but they are all, birthday people and party guests, always on the receiving end. No patient ever does anything for the party.

The activities director was very well liked. Would they think it fun, I asked, to give a party themselves for her? Most patients gave the impression that they liked the idea.

We discussed decoration and a cake. People who had not spoken up at other meetings commented-"chocolate's too rich", "no nuts for me", "pink's the color for a party".

What did they like about the director as a person, I asked. Their remarks-"She's a lady, she's kind, a friend, a hard worker-no mean traits in her"-I made into a verse and printed it on a card handdecorated by one of the group.

For entertainment two patients offered to recite poems (recited before), one to sing, and a man was chosen to pin on the activities director's gift-a corsage. The group suggested I read "our poems", the ones they had heard made up of their words.

The party went off well. The performers moved up to the front of

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Anna Louise Arnort 85

the room, in walkers or wheelchairs. Two women in wheel chairs arranged the table with paper plates, cloth and napkins. Another cut the cake. A volunteer and I only passed the plates.

Needless to say the director was moved. But I, too, was pleased. More people had participated than before, even if they only ad- mitted liking a color or disliking a kind of cake. Those that per- formed showed initiative and enjoyed performing. Those whose ideas in verse were read seemed proud of it. I noticed that some pa- tients took interest in others. ("That was Nell's poem", "I want to sit next to Dora. I can hold her cup for her".)

And most important, it was the patient who was giving and not just given to-which of course was my aim-to help the old feel of value.

This experiment in a single nursing home of using poetry and the beginnings of poetry to increase communication and a sense of value in each life could be carried to many other homes provided there were trained volunteers or workers.

Hopefully, the trained worker, through his or her love of people, poetic sensitivity and psychological knowledge will be able to weave together from the patients' stories and feelings a vision of the wholeness of life.

I illustrate with a poem. During a recent meeting I chose the sub- ject "Quiet Things". What was remembered-the everyday scene, the homeland, games and fun, tragedy and miracle-I wove into this poem.

Quiet Things

Of quiet things we think. As if by magic, quiet scenes sink into our minds. Cats' soundless paws slink across kitchen floors. From a Norwegian boat, we see white lillies float on water, mountain shadowed black. We recall a game and the lack of voice power in the one whose bingo number had won. We remember an accidental death, the quietness of a small sister's breath A child speaks after soundless years. Quiet are the mother's tears.

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86 ACTIVITIES, ADAPTATION & AGING

After reading the piece aloud, I found that the group agreed with, contributed to, and seemed to be comforted by my thoughts and my leading of their thoughts on a discussion that life was all encompass- ing.

I will close with one woman's spontaneous contribution in verse:

Sunshine and shadow, joy and tears, they are the fruits of the on-going years.

REFERENCES

Roben Butler, M.D., Why Survive, Chap. 9. Harper & Row N.Y. 1975. Kenneth Koch, I Never Told Anybody. Vantage Books, Random House 1925. Working Papers, The Healing Role of the Arts. Rockefeller Foundation 1978. Irwin Edman. Arts and the Man. Wm. Norton & Co. N.Y. 1939. Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person. Houghton Mifflin 1961. Lee Silverstein and Ion E. Brett. Shaping the Sounds of Silence, Val. 23 No. 3 Fall 1976.

Addictions Research Foundation of Ontario, Toronto, Canada. I . 1. Leedy, Poerry Therapy, 1969; Poerry, the Healer. 1973. Lippencon, Philadelphia, Pa.

POEMS

Louis Untermeyer, Paths of Poetry. Delacortc, N.Y. 1966. Anna Louise Amott, From One ro Another. Anthelion Press, San Francisco 1976 Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verse. Henry W. Longfellow, Songs of Hiawatha.

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