CRISIS

   Life has a way of testing strength, and will. It has a way to interfere with the usual. It disrupts normal, the life routine, it is as uncontrollable as the weather.  The test, it is the ultimate evaluation. Whether an individual prepares for a crisis is not the measure, it is whether or not the individual can withstand the pressures of the annomallies. Can one withstand the difference in the routine that disrupts the daily flow as well as the emotional strain of distress, such as, a dramatic family disruption as caused by a profound illness juggling the emotional distress along with altering routines of life. If an individual that has been in the same routine and environment is  transported into a new residence, as in the case of someone moved to assisted living or nursing care, has the problem reestablishing habits for self care, reestablishing the route the brain must take to function. Persons are comfortable with routines they have honed for years, the place where the brain has links to stored things as when needed. It is simple to find the broom, that has been in the same closet for years. Or the brush that has always been on the shelf next to the comb that was bought on vacation years ago, and then  the mind wanders to the holiday enjoyed those many years past. But now, the brush on the new shelf has no connection to the vacation long past, the mind has to reroute a link, rewire the site back into the memories. This, is not always possible, and the individual who functioned so well, who was so efficient, can no longer establish the link and therefore cannot make the connection with what to do with the brush, and has totally forgotten the holiday so long ago and so fondly revisited. The time is past, erased, no, disappeared in the furrows of the wiring of the mind and can no longer be recollected. And suddenly the spry senior has aged, withered into the shell of wrinkles and dry skin. The flicker of youth, it's glimmer of energy with the spark struck by the discoveries spent, the flames expired. And the little old person sits waiting for the mind to make a connection to the past, that has, and is stored, the lost years, missing, unremembered, the time spent, withered away like the minutes wasted. The body less agile, the strength waning, the abilities draining, gravity hanging, and the stories that warmed the wintry darkness sit in the closed book of the mind, while the old one waits, for the match to strike the spark of the past that has been carried carefully all these years, the treasured thoughts of yesterday. Together they sit, volumes gathering dust on the shelves of today, in a place with no warmth, no history,  no link, no roots. Nothing there but the whisper of the breath slowly slipping into the cloud  that drifts by. And the days pass. The images slowly disappear and the old one gets smaller and smaller as all the memories of yesterday dissolve on the air of today. The less remembered the less able, the less important. the less necessary, the less there is, then there is nomore. And the crisis passes to the next generation, not the same issues, no, new issues, their issues, their crisis of the present, as the past drifts by.