Losing all my leaves

Some years ago -- about 30 years, truth be told -- I found myself sitting next to an elderly man inside Wohl Psychiatric Hospital in midtown St. Louis.

Although in my thirties at the time, pastoral ministry was fairly new to me back then.

My training had already taken me to the old St. Louis City Jail on Clark Street.

If you say there's no jail there today, you're right. The building was razed some time ago, and the site is now a parking lot.

The experience at the lockup was OK because everybody could talk back, and this columnist is most comfortable in conversation.

At Wohl, the atmosphere was different.

The senior pastor had assigned me to talk to a man housed at Wohl who was suffering with dementia.

The protocol was -- and this was not explained to me, and I didn't ask -- guests sat out in the hall with patients.

No private session was allowed, presumably because if a person became agitated, the staff could respond more quickly.

The lack of a true one-on-one was familiar because jail officials also didn't permit such a private meeting.

My memory of the encounter at Wohl, unlike the city lockup, is that it seemed endless.

The man talked to me but said the same thing over and over.

I held the man's hand as we sat on a bench together and looked out a window as he repeatedly uttered the refrain, "It's so sad. It's so sad."

My attempts to redirect his thinking were ineffective.

Assuring the man that his son, who had asked that the visit be made, loved him and was thinking about him, his reply was the same as the aforementioned.

Every attempt to launch a conversation failed utterly.

Grasping at straws, I launched into reciting the Lord's Prayer.

In hearing such a familiar petition from the Christian tradition, perhaps some memory engram would be triggered to break the barrier preventing a true back-and-forth talk.

Today, this writer is much more familiar with the seven stages of dementia and am aware now that the man was probably in moderately severe Stage 6 -- still able to speak but generally unaware of surroundings and unable to call to mind the names of children, spouse and primary caregivers.

After a time, I stopped talking, kept holding his hand and joined him in looking out the window while he intermittently continued the "It's so sad" refrain.

Calling on my pastoral care education, I had chosen to adopt what is known as the ministry of presence.

Nothing needed to be said because nothing could be.

This early 1990s encounter was called to mind late in the 2020 movie, "The Father," for which Anthony Hopkins received an Academy Award.

His powerful performance of a retired engineer in London slipping through the stages of dementia was crystallized in a single line from the screenplay.

In anguish, the institutionalized Hopkins said: "I feel as if I'm losing all my leaves."

In reflecting on Hopkins' performance and my own long-ago experience as a green pastor in a psychiatric setting, the words of the New Testament come to mind.

This column will conclude with Jesus' words taken from the New International Version translation.

The reader is invited to consider the work of those who care for dementia patients -- either in professional care settings or in private homes -- every single workday.

"Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." (John 21:18)