Author Flannery O’Connor writes, “Fiction operates through the senses…the first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched.”
As much as writers struggle to incorporate the five senses into their work, humans struggle more in reality. We move around our day without taking a moment to admire how the watery orange of a spring sunrise gives us hope and the tinge of tangerine in the wintertime causes wistfulness. Or how the fluffy bedspread comforts us as we sleep. The way in which we do this is through gratitude – being thankful for noticing and for the stimulation provided. For celebrating our well-being and the beauty in this world.
How does this concept apply to caregiving?
Story-Centered Care
If we use Flannery O’Connor’s quote to examine our everyday lives, we can enhance the stories we share about our loved ones through the senses. In the past, I’ve written narratives about my mother, sister and father, in each of their care settings. These stories enhance our care for one another through compassion and through evoking the senses. For my father, I wrote how he’d come home from work at the shoe store with the earthy smell of leather carried home on shirts. When writing stories about my mother, I wrote of the crisp cracking of Italian cookies called pizzelles. These stories help us take notice of who that person is. We can weave those stories into our care, along with our senses, to spark memories.
There is such a strong connection between the sense of smell and memory. When it rains in springtime, I’m taken back to my days spent in Oregon. I’ll say, “It’s an Oregon morning,” and my family knows what that means and understands where my mind is. Sometimes, I crave the rain to take me back to those memories. Our sense of smell travels straight to the temporal lobe, the smarter part of our tissues. In a way, it’s a direct line to who we are.
Think of your loved ones as readers of this story you are in together – in which specific characters, events and experiences influence each other to form a meaningful narrative. How can you enhance that? Using our senses.
How Language Evokes the Senses
When we communicate with loved ones, there are several ways to incorporate the senses into our time together, other than the simple conversations we resort to. For starters, think about reading poetry to them. When I put a book with William Wordsworth’s Daffodils in front of my mother, she read the poem with the correct intonation. Repetition is reliable. In her dementia, she wanted to know what came next, even if cognitively she’d forget in the next moment. For me, I will forever associate the brilliance of a daffodil with that moment when she read it to me. Poetry is a healing language, and so is music. Both are filled with sensory references and oftentimes convey what ordinary humans cannot.
Touch as Self-Care
Our hands are constantly moving through the day. How often do we stop to consider what they are really feeling? I don’t mean whether your muscles ache, or you have a cracked fingernail that throbs. But finding something you can touch to make you feel. It could be as simple as Playdough or fidget spinners. My mother felt her way in the world through baking and cooking. The Montessori method is based on this principle. There is something to be gained from whatever we hold in our hands. Our hands not only shape our environment, but they help us to create one too.
When my mother moved into her first care home, a caregiver on staff brought her a doll. Mom carried that doll everywhere. If the doll was lost, my mother was too. This scene repeated itself with other residents, especially for females who had experienced motherhood. Dolls were given names, or they were caressed in the same way a woman caressed a newborn. The holding on grounded those residents.
Taste as Tour
To get to know her mother-in-law, Grethen Rubin, author of Life in Five Senses, took her on a taste tour of the lower East side of Manhattan, where her mother-in-law once lived. The prospect was so enticing, her daughters joined as well. I wish I would have taken my father to an Italian salumeria, where the smells of rich, fat cured meats might mingle with juniper or anise or saffron. Each might have evoked his travels to Italy, my mother’s cooking in the kitchen, or our family dinners. Or even later, when he was a guest at his daughter’s table, and I plated the cheeses and salami, and he no longer did.
Environment as Five Senses
When you think about your loved one’s environment, take in all the senses you can. Try making a list of the five senses and write a few items within each category that might be important to your loved one – items you can focus on or add to their environment. Do they love flowers? Would they appreciate the sight and smell of them? Is removal of clutter important to them? My mother loved running her dry hands up and down my arms. I rubbed lotion on my arms before our visits to ensure they were smoother during our time. In the end, I doubt she noticed, but touching my arms made her feel known and loved. And grounded me too.
