You never know what kind of weather we are going to have in Minnesota, especially in the month of June, but yesterday the weather was perfect, so I took seven residents from our memory care environment on a picnic to our local park by a lake.
Although it was a bit windy, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. We enjoyed a delicious picnic lunch of meat loaf sandwiches, chips, fresh fruit and a fresh baked cookie. When we finished our lunch, I asked the residents to take some time to tell me what they could see, hear and feel. As they listed off different things in their environment that they were experiencing, it reminded me of how busy we allow our lives to become. We get so caught up in schedules, people, work, and day to day tasks that we often forget the healing powers of allowing ourselves to take in our environments, such as a picnic by the lake in the month of June.
There are many things that we can learn from people who have dementia. An important lesson we can learn is to take each day slowly; one day at a time, one task at a time, and try not to be in a hurry to get to the next thing, because each opportunity that we’ve been given is to be cherished as if it were the last one.
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