The Bus Stop – by Joan Foulks

I waited for the bus

But the bus just passed me by

I had the ticket in my hand

The schedule memorised

 

The destination isn’t clear

Just somewhere far away from here

Somewhere where I won’t be scared

Where my aloneness can be shared

 

I’m tired of staring at the wall

The words in books I can’t recall

My past times now so meaningless

Their joys? – diminished nothingness

 

I can’t remember who I am

Or friends I might have known

We’re all strangers in my brain

Silent shadows each alone

 

Time has somehow stopped for me

Invisible I can’t get free

I’ve become the living dead

Hopeless, all I feel is dread

 

The Present needs the Past and Future

To be real and not conjecture

Lost in timeless fantasy

I’m angry that I can’t find me

 

(Am I a lost article? –

Or a God Particle

In a quantum parallel

Not lost but doing rather well?)

 

I want my life to seem familiar

Not full of loneliness and terror

I want to love and laugh again

I want to live! – not just pretend

 

Why can’t destiny be kind

To my kaleidoscopic mind

Make my worries go away

Make the Past come out to play?

 

If I could just get on that bus

I think I’d sweep away the dust

So memories’ ghosts could reappear

In a clearer atmosphere

 

I know I’d ride and ride and ride

Till I remembered when I died

So I could finally find some peace

And my soul could be released

Into the endless sea

Or the burning sapphire sky

My heart a dancing wild balloon

Drifting towards eternity

 

A poem about dementia by Joan Foulks.

NPR broadcast a story about a senior care home in Dusseldorf where most of the residents needed only slight assistance, but there were also a significant number who suffered from dementia. Increasingly, some of these residents would walk outside the home and get lost. The Assisted Living Home did not want to have a ‘lock down’ situation, creating a prison atmosphere for those who were mentally and physically sound, but they were also worried about harm coming to those who needed a bit more attention. They thought and thought and then came up with the idea to build a bus stop, a fake one, a place that had the appearance of being a bus stop but where no buses would actually stop. This worked like a charm! The wanderers would gravitate  towards the bus stop and sit endlessly, not marking the passage of time and patiently waiting for the bus that never came. The staff would make a point of checking the bus stop often, to collect their charges and bring them back inside.

It is human nature to want to discover, change surroundings, explore, no matter what the circumstances of ones life. I wrote this poem for my mother. Many of the phrases I used were said to me by her and her fellow companions at the care home where she spent the last three years of her life.

In memory of Margie who would have been 98 on the 29th of April.