Joan is one of my favorite people at the Mansion. And one of my favorite portrait subjects.
Some day I’d love to do a Joan show and she thinks it’s a great idea, she loves to have her photo taken. Joan has severe memory problems, she does recall the death of her daughter, who was murdered when she was very young.
Often, when I am in the Mansion, Joan will come up to me and ask for help in remembering where her room is, she takes my arm and we walk down the stairs and down the hallway on the ground floor and I open the door and she thanks me and goes in.
She often has reveries, but she paints beautiful pictures sometimes, and writes very beautiful poems. She surprised me when she told told me in my poetry workshop that when people age, they remember what they must remember, and forget what they don’t need to remember. She told me getting older is about today, there are yesterdays but no tomorrows to worry about.
Joan’s room is spare – little on the bed, nothing on the walls. This is because she believes she is going home every day and packs up all of her things. The staff unpacks what she needs, and she forgets about going home and walks the halls of the Mansion, where everyone knows her and keeps an eye out for her.
There is always something to guide her to her room.
I gave her a fair number of things to hang on the wall before I figured out that she was packing them all, so the walls are bare.
I sometimes find her in the Great Room, and the thing about Joan is that she always has a smile and she is always ready to laugh. We often tell mumbo-jumbo jokes to one another and we both laugh, neither of us could follow the joke but the idea is funny to both of us.
Today, several of the residents got all dressed up for winter and went out onto the porch to sit down. When I came out with Red and the camera, Joan said she had some funny faces to show me, and she did have some funny faces, I knew few people who laugh more easily than Joan.
When I say goodbye, I often get a hug and a kiss. I made a face back at her and we both had a good laugh. She said she would take my picture one day.