Volunteering at Cooper's Corner

A few schoolmates and I have volunteered at Cooper's Corner, a memory care residence in Westchester where we spent time with residents living with dementia and Alzheimer's.

Talking with someone who has Alzheimer's took me a while to stop doing badly because my instinct was to ask the questions you ask anywhere else (what did you do this morning, etc). Those questions can be quietly unkind in a memory care unit, because they ask a person to perform the exact thing the disease has taken from them.

So we changed the conversation, letting residents lead us wherever their minds were strongest, which was usually the distant past or something very random. People described things like their weddings or lovers, but the conversations were not smaller because of the disease. They just lived in a different part of time, and once we met the residents there they had plenty to say.

Then we began to play bingo where the simplicity is the whole point. It asks nothing of short-term memory. Each number arrives, gets found, gets marked, and is allowed to disappear. Actually, calling those numbers taught me more about patience than any class ever has. Some players track their cards instantly. Many need a volunteer beside them, pointing gently at the B column, repeating the number without frustration. When someone wins, the whole room registers it, even residents who seemed checked out moments before. A win at bingo is a small thing, but watching someone light up over it made me realize how rarely we appreciate things as small as that.

Going as a group changed the experience too. It is one thing to do community service alone. It is another to look across the room and see a classmate you normally only talk to about homework, hearing a ninety year old finish a story. The ride home, comparing conversations with who we sat with, gave our group some of its most honest conversations.

I keep thinking about the fact that most residents will not remember we were there. At first that bothered me, but the staff told us something that reframed it: the feeling of a good afternoon can outlast the memory of it, and the person may forget the bingo game and the students who ran it, but still carry the comfort for the rest of the day. Hopefully next year or even sooner we can go back to visit.