Coffee<\/p>\n
Even if residents wanted nothing to do with me,<\/p>\n
even if they despised me coming into their rooms,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
cheery and chatting away about my new poetry program<\/p>\n
in the activity area, even with responses such as:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t write. Never have, never will.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWill you please close those drapes, it\u2019s too bright in here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean, I hate poetry. We had to learn it in school and it was terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know I can\u2019t even hold a pen anymore, Amy.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then, I would make my final offering:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, even if you don\u2019t participate, there will be coffee available.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Every week, my stubborn participants wheeled themselves down the long halls<\/p>\n
to our gathering, where I wrote out comments from our conversations,<\/p>\n
turning memories into poems, dementia or not, laughter<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
sneaking its way into the heart of a building where residents<\/p>\n
know they will most likely never leave.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I gave each of them a green plastic cup of coffee<\/p>\n
while we talked, an offering for their bravery to trust me with their stories.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They held those cups like an afternoon on a porch somewhere,<\/p>\n
sitting outside in the sun like they once did, bringing back what they thought was lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Coffee Even if residents wanted nothing to do with me, even if they despised me coming into their rooms, cheery and chatting away about my new poetry program in the activity area, even with responses such as: \u201cI don\u2019t write. Never have, never…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3733,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89399,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89375\/revisions\/89399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}