“I wont…Kansas….cold button red venne-mutton.”

Word Salad.

This was how we referred to the speech patterns of the people in the unit who can no longer make meaningful sentences out of words. From 2011 until 2014, I worked in a locked unit for dementia patients who were no longer able to care for themselves. I was thinking about that time in my life, and the people I met in the locked unit, today, especially that words didn’t always come easily to them.  This word sald was part of daily life in Arcadia – a deliberate allusion to the isolated Arcadia region of Greece, where the people were known far and wide for their innocent, simple, contented way of life.

In our Arcadia, we celebrated the little things – a chipmunk scurrying across the terrace, a new episode of The Price is Right, even remembering my name was a reason to party for a few minutes.

That isn’t to say that we didn’t have challenges in our little neighborhood. Because they couldn’t remember why they’d been placed in Arcadia, there was often anxiety or fear that manifested itself in things like compulsive picking, pacing or moving, exit seeking [also known as “I wanna go home!” behavior], and more often than not, unexplained, unintelligible verbal outbursts.

And then there was Pastor Paul.

To look at him, you’d never know that this slight man was ever anything so impressive as a strapping Baptist minister for 35 years. And yet, that’s exactly what he dedicated his life to doing…he preached the gospel in small Pennsylvania churches, and [judging from the number of parishioners who visited regularly] he LOVED his people. But that was in the past.

Now in the throes of dementia, Pastor Paul had lost all connection with the English language, and spoke only in this “word salad”…his speech jumbled, tumbled, and tossed like lettuce and veggies in a bowl. He sat, confined to a wheelchair, mumbling nonsense under his breath for most of the day.

As an ex-pastor myself, I had a special affinity for Pastor Paul. He was such a sweet, gentle man, even with his advanced disease.

We worked an every-other-weekend schedule, so I was able to spend two Sunday mornings a month with the residents, singing old Christian hymns and reading scriptures to them. I’d already stopped going to church myself, and barely believed in god anymore, but I so looked forward to those Sunday mornings.

On one of those Sundays, in the circle of wheelchairs parked in the dining room, I had one of the singularly most profound spiritual experiences of my life. And it didn’t happen in a church or cathedral…but in the dining room of our little Arcadian neighborhood.

As we sat in a circle and sang hymns to the accompaniment of a scratchy old cassette player, a strange transformation began to take hold of Pastor Paul. As I walked from person to person, flipping the pages in their hymnals and encouraging them to sing a line or two, I noticed that, for the first time in my three months in Arcadia, Pastor Paul was singing. Not just mouthing nonsense like he usually did, but SINGING….loud, clear, strong, REAL words.

I stopped and stared.

I’d never seen Pastor Paul do anything like this. And as the chorus of the hymn approached, his voice became even more urgent and strong… “IT IS WELL….WITH MY SOUL…IT IS WELL, IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL!”

I couldn’t believe it. I stood there, unsure what to do, as tears welled in Pastor Paul’s eyes.

“Are you enjoying this, Pastor Paul?” I asked.

What happened next nearly made me lose my footing….

“I not only enjoy it, I REJOICE IN IT!”  came the booming response.

Dumbfounded, and overwhelmed with emotion, I stood next to him with my arm around his shoulders, and together, we sang the last verse.

“And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight. The clouds be rolled back as a scroll. The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend. Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, Oh My Soul!” 

And at that, Pastor Paul picked up his heavy, giant print Bible that the nurses dutifully placed on his lap every Sunday, gathered all his strength, and struggled to his feet.

I started to object, but the look on his face stopped me in my tracks.

“Oh my goodness” I thought, “he’s going to try to preach”.

The old man steadied himself with me standing next to him, my arm wrapped around his waist for support, and carefully set his bible down on the tray table and straightened himself up. I will never forget what he said next as long as I live.

Looking at his fellow patients, he began to speak, slowly but deliberately. “You know, ‘this’ [making swirling motions around his own head] doesn’t work too well. Know what I mean?”

The other residents nodded in agreement.

“It gets pretty loud in there. Pretty loud. But…..” he paused, and tears began to course down his face. “But…..I can still hear the whisper. I can still hear Him. It isn’t so loud we can’t hear Him.”

Then he turned to face me. “They can’t take His voice. Can you still hear Him?”

I couldn’t believe it. He had no idea that I had been a pastor too. My heart melted, and through my tears, I nodded. “Yes, Pastor Paul, I think can still hear him.”

“Good. Keep listening.”  He paused again, and then smiled the sweetest, most innocent, contented smile I’ve even seen, sat down in his wheelchair, and promptly fell asleep. And when he woke up, his first words to me were, “I wont…Kansas….cold button red venne-mutton.”

Pastor Paul was back to ‘normal’ once again.

I couldn’t help but dwell on what he had preached though. It was the simplest, shortest sermon I’d ever witnessed, but the power of his few words was unmistakable.

I learned the most important lesson of my life from an 89 year old man with dementia. Somehow, he was able to cross over from the Arcadian world of Alzheimer’s to remind me that through all the noise of life, whether it’s the confusion of dementia or the pain of starting over, we can still ‘hear’ the hope of our beliefs, whatever those beliefs may be.