Betty Plack, a resident of the Sunrise Senior Living home, takes part in a program intended to trigger Christmas memories.
By Robert A. Reeder

The Ghost of Christmas Past slips in on a gingerbread breeze. The Colonel can't resist an urge to rearrange the stockings over the fireplace again, and Betty Plack wants the holiday table set just so for the guests she expects any minute now -- have you seen them, are they here?

Virginia Moates, elegant in her pearls and knit suit and fresh pink manicure, laughs in delight each time she passes the giant inflatable snowman posed in the hallway. "Is it Christmas yet?" she wants to know.

Betty Plack, a resident of the Sunrise Senior Living home, takes part in a program intended to trigger Christmas memories. 

"Not yet," Nadine Harris tells her. "Soon."

But memories, not clocks or calendars, mark the seasons in the Sunrise Senior Living home on Connecticut Avenue NW, where 20 patients with Alzheimer's disease consider the third floor their neighborhood, and Christmas here does not loom so much as linger. 
Nadine, 40, is the Sunrise staff member responsible for decorations, making sure the snowflakes dangling from the ceiling and the ornaments on the tree are monochromatic silver and white, the fairy lights clear and not flashing, creating a tableau tranquil as new-fallen snow. She is the reminiscence coordinator, the one who schedules the day's activities, like field trips to exhibits or a museum, or the group social where everyone chats about holiday traditions.

Today, a visiting facilitator is leading the discussion. Marlene Sandhu has brought a box of holiday props, and 85-year-old Betty Plack, who was a Hagerstown homemaker, gladly ties a holly-sprigged apron around her trim waist.

"My mother always made -- " Betty searches for the word. "Fruitcake?"

The Colonel playfully puts on a red Santa hat, swapping it later for some felt reindeer antlers and then again for a bejeweled Three Kings crown, which eventually ends up atop Virginia's well-coiffed head.

"Queen Virginia," the facilitator prompts, "what would you like to tell us?"

"That you're all a bunch of wonderful people!" comes the reply.

Betty gets up from her chair to curtsy deeply in her Christmas apron. "Well, thank you," she says, planting a kiss on her friend's cheek.

Some clementines are being peeled and passed around, their citrus scent reminding Virginia of the orange and grapefruit trees that grew in her yard when she was a girl in California. Someone begins to sing: "Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darling Clementine." Everyone joins in, voices thin but sure.

"Thou art lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine."

Nadine looks on fondly. The patients remind her of her beloved grandmother. She treasures the stories these elders have to share, coaxing memories from them with gentle curiosity and visual reminders, like a vintage wedding gown or old military uniform. It's part of her job -- to join the journey when a patient's mind rambles. Her background is in nursing and social work. A decade ago, she was working in a mental hospital in New York, and remembers with horror how dementia was treated then, the cold baths to try to shock someone back to reality, the restraints to prevent patients from wandering, the drugs that fogged minds that were still vibrant, just confused.

"I didn't understand back then," she laments.

The people she cares for now remind her of her Jamaican grandmother, who raised her back home on the island after her mother emigrated, alone, to the States. On Christmas morning, Nadine's grandmother would put her in the special dress sent from America, "with three big clocks on the front of it, I called it my clock dress," and they would go to the marketplace, where the older woman would buy her spun sugar.

Now Nadine asks Col. Amos Shattuck if he likes Christmas and leans forward eagerly when the 82-year-old West Point graduate nods and says, "Oh, sure. Christmas, let's see, you got things to open, those are fun, interesting, worthwhile things to do." His fingers nimbly unwrap an imaginary present. What about a bicycle, wonders Nadine, did he ever get a bicycle?

"I've done okay," he replies with a grin. "I've gotten bicycles recently." Nadine makes no attempt to bring him back from the memory he is reliving. His hands fuss again with the unseen gift. "Putting stuff together, it doesn't fit, all the pieces," he frets. Nadine knows the Colonel has a talent for building models, that he used to assemble military airplane reproductions for museum displays.

Betty drops by, wanting to know if it's time to go yet. She doesn't want to miss today's outing.

Christmas has always been one of her favorite seasons, she says, recalling the archery set she got one year. "We expected to see Santa Claus come down the chimney, so we didn't light the fire on Christmas Eve," she says. "We always left Santa Claus goodies. We'd have to bring boxes down from the attic, with Christmas balls and the silver, the silver, what do you call it?"

"Tinsel?" Nadine ventures.

"Yes, tinsel. It fills up the holes," Betty goes on. "We always had to leave something for Santa to eat. We'd leave some coffee, but we thought maybe he liked Coke, too. The cookies were gone when we woke up." She remembers how the lake in the city park froze, how people could skate on it. "We decorated things," she says, "things to float on the water. Christmas trees were on floats." Beauty catches somewhere on a corner of her mind, and she is thinking now of art, she was a fine-arts major, yes, at Goucher College.

"In my last year, I was selected to go into the WAVES," she discloses, and Nadine nods, knowing from the history provided by Betty's family that this is true, that Betty Plack served her country during World War II. "All hush-hush work, of course," Betty confides, "to break the Japanese codes."

She was the middle of three children, and her sister lives in the District. Betty, who is 86, looks forward to helping decorate her sister's tree. "We had to leave something for Santa Claus to eat," she says. "We had an honest-to-God chimney in that room."

A woman in a fuchsia pullover hurries over, distressed. She is nonverbal, but Nadine knows that this loveseat in front of the Christmas tree -- now occupied -- "is her favorite spot." Nadine helps the newcomer settle into the plump cushions, then hands her a baby doll from a carriage parked in the corner, knowing that the patient raised three sons and wants to cuddle only the boy dolls. She will sit, cooing and content, for hours in front of that tree.

Nadine's grandmother had a story she always told at Christmas, about the pine tree and why it stayed green all year round. It was a poem, Nadine thinks, and the way she remembers it, God had gathered all the plants and animals together, "to give them their duties."

"The Creator told them: 'You'll sleep when wintertime comes,' " she recounts. "And the pine tree was curious, and asked the Creator: Do you sleep or slumber when winter comes? And the Creator said, 'No, my child, I never sleep or slumber." And so the pine tree begged to keep watch, too, and was given a green coat of armor to shield itself against the cold.

It's almost dinnertime on the third floor, and Nadine must keep watch on the elevators. A code has to be entered to make the doors open, but still she worries about the residents who tend to gather there this time of day, when light fades and Alzheimer's patients become more agitated, a condition known as sundowning.

Virginia Moates appears with her handbag, her lipsticked mouth pursed with worry. She kisses Nadine on the cheek, as if to say goodbye. "I want to go home now," she says. Nadine hugs her back, gently leading her away, inviting her to come have some supper. Nadine returns to find another elderly woman weeping in front of an elevator, and repeats her evening ritual.

Betty Plack seeks her out next, ready to go, but it's the daily trip she's intent on.

"Should we be going now?" she urges.

"No, after dinner," Nadine answers, "I promise, I wouldn't leave you."

Christmas is coming, and she has something special planned tonight, an outing to a Maryland observatory, where together they will all search for the North Star, tracing its path across the dark winter night.