Alli's Internship Day 40

Yesterday I did the TTAP Method with two geriatric residents. One of them has Alzheimer's Disease and the other has Crohn's Disease. This time we made memory boxes. I brought two boxes from Micheal's craft store that were only $1.99 each and were surprisingly very nice and great for this project. I also bought beads that you would normally put in a vase for that extra effect, but i used them as gems to glue onto the memory boxes. I also got wooden cut-outs that they could paint and put on the box as well. After the meditation of the memories were pouring out of them like it was happening right than and there. One resident talked about her brother's wedding and how she used to look after her brother and she always played more of the mother role. She said she was so proud of him in that moment and has not had that feeling in a while. She described the beach wedding in Hawaii down to the smallest detail of her sister in-laws wedding dress. She said it was sunny and the weather couldn't be more perfect, that in a glance her brother went from a boy to a man. She was also crying for most of the wedding she said both happy and sad tears. She was so proud and happy that he had grown up and was moving forward in life in a positive way. She also said she was sad to see he go in a different direction than where she was going but the still remand close. To this day he calls her every weekend to make sure she is ok and he is the only family she has left, she said she was glad about how great their relationship is. The other resident also a wedding during the meditation, but this wedding was her own. She said it was the happiest day of her life. Her wedding was at the city hall and she said that it didn't matter where she was, she was just so happy that she was marrying the man of her dreams. She said that she had a reception but the wedding was small and intimate. She never wanted anything big and city hall was a perfect fit for them. She had a big family and also married into a big family. She also said that she can replay that whole day in her head over and over like a movie as if it was just yesterday. They then painted the boxes and added the cut-outs and gems to it they came out really nice, better than I had imagined and they loved it. Inside the boxes we put key words that would bring them back to that day they remembered, such as ...wedding, Hawaii, city hall, cake, the colors from the wedding, the type of cake that was served, rings, the names of the couples, and things like that. Overall I think that this was one of the most powerful and emotional sessions that I have done so far. It was very successful.