Joan can rarely speak in a full sentence,  yet I hear her calling to me very clearly. She is searching for her memory, her identity, her story. She is crying out to me, to others, to the world to help her remember who she is and where she came from.

It is a holy task to me, and I will very humbly try to answer he call. I believe I now have a few tools to work with and build on. I will never forget the pride and joy in her face when she answered all those questions for me in the Mansion Activity Room. We are now reading with one another, next she will read those questions to me.

I got a powerful and important letter today from Dr. Peter Dixon, one of the co-authors of the reading and memory handbooks I have  been using at the Mansion to help residents like my friend Joan and others revive their memory and help elderly people with memory loss to find a way to read again.

Readers of the blog have been forwarding my pieces on their reading books to him and his partner, Susan Ostrowski of reading2connect,  and they, in turn, have been encouraging me. I am a layman, of course in this work, I didn’t think to study the program or take courses in how to use it, I just saw it and felt it and went to work with it.

“I was excited to hear you found our books, recognized their potential and tried them at the Mansion (blog reader told me about them in an e-mail). To do that independently, without our usual coaching and encouragement, is testimony to the power of the books and of reading at this age.”

I appreciate those words, I should also say it is a testament to the curious way I have always learned, which is on my own and by myself, I am almost psychically unable to learn through coaching and teaching, and I say that with no pride, I learn through a cloud of disabilities and impairments.

“We are confident about the capacity of our books and your experiences reinforce that. Whether they are read to older individuals in similar settings or they read them to each other in a group, accessible books engage these people.”

Over the years, he wrote, he and Ostrowski were surprised to learn that once a small group starts reading independently, they’re better off without staff around. The group takes ownership of the activity. Interactions become more spontaneous and genuine. They interrupt each other, conversations begin, memories pour out and dialogue takes place.

Not having an outside leader or monitor, he writes, promotes independence and the time and space to express themselves as peers, without the fear of failing or looking foolish.

“We look upon this as empowerment to be independent, uncommon in the settings of assisted care. The primary purpose of the books, he wrote, is to enrich the lives of elderly people.

It is an exciting undertaking for me. The lives of senior citizens living in assisted care facilities desperately needs to be enriched. The administrators at the Mansion have been nothing but supportive of the work I am doing, even as we all recognize that the administrative, bureaucratic, regulatory,  financial, health, behavioral and other burdens they face make it extremely difficult for them to stand back and initiate complex programs by themselves.

So far, I have not sensed a willingness of the residents to read without me or by themselves. I think they are afraid of failing or being frustrated once again. No one likes to be reminded that they can no longer read comfortably or are losing their memory. I believe many see reading as something lost to them, they are afraid to try it again and face disappointment and loss.

Rather than try to read, they often tell me why they can’t read any longer.

My idea is to take it one resident at a time, working with people like Joan and Diane and seeing if they can recover some of their confidence in reading and memory, and feel successful, rather than frustrated or handicapped. The system by its very nature breeds dependence and struggles to find stimulation.

I think the Mansion is almost heroic in its efforts to find and schedule activities every day for the residents. Yet working to revive memory and something as personal and reading is very individual, and personal, and labor intensive. I am a trained literacy volunteer and also an author, so the power of reading is very important to me, and I am deeply aware of it.

My reading with Joan was the product of many hours of our working together – writing poems, painting, reading aloud. The people on the Mansion staff are busy every minute, and then some. No federal or regulatory agency will assist them in a project like this, sadly, or pay for staff to do it.

I have also and over the past year established trust and even love with some of the residents, Joan in particular (and Connie and others). We have a foundation to work with, Joan trusts me not to hurt her or get frustrated with her, or brand her a failure in any way. She doesn’t know who I am but she seems to know what I am, and that is an extraordinary thing.

I will follow Dr.Dixon’s ambitions for his books – they are his books, after all – and see if I can get this reading idea started and slowly turn it over to the residents, who so far, have shown resistance to taking it on as group.

Dr. Nixon acknowledged in his letter that the the institutions who house and care for the elderly have not yet shown much interest in his concept. That is not a surprise to me, I see how overwhelmed they are with work. His goal it bypass them and get the information about his books out into the world.

“We would love to have  you join us in this effort,” he wrote. “Clearly your experience as a writer and your sensitivity to this topic would be helpful explaining the joy and power of reading in this demographic group.”

I wrote back to Dr. Dixon and I told him I am not a joiner, my plate is pretty full. But I would be happy to join him and Ms. Ostrowski in this work, it is important and urgent and desperately needed. This, I think, is a movement I could perhaps join.

I was thrilled and humbled by my work with Joan the other day. I hope I can fight my way through tomorrow’s snowstorm and continue it. If not, I ‘ll be there on Friday.