"Of mirrors, identity, and the faces of dementia"
SEPTEMBER 16, 2011
"I’ve always been bad at recognizing faces. If you have stood in a school’s lobby, peering at dozens of kids in uniform, not quite sure which of the alleged cherubs is your son, then you know the sort of problem I’ve lived with all my life. I dread to think how this problem will make things worse for me if I get dementia. And I know that for my mother, who had a similar difficulty with face recognition, this would have added to the woes of her dementia confusion.
Most people see the same face, the same person, regardless of the person’s changing expressions. But for me, each person has many faces, depending on the mood or place or what he or she is doing. This means, I have to remember so much more if I want to be able recognize someone. Other clues are not dependable either; people change their styles of clothes, their hairstyle and color, they put on weight, they lose weight….so very unfair, I tell you
Decades of living with or near my mother has, however, made me confident about recognizing her face in all its moods. As I saw her slip into the confusion of dementia, I would watch her once-sharp-and-beautiful eyes look glazed, confused, even dull. I became familiar with those tiny changes in the muscles of her face that indicated the beginning of agitation; I tuned myself to preempt her agitation before it became full-blown. Her face is, to me, a collection of parts, and I know how each feature changes through her range of emotions." ..............
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