I remember when my mother was ill and near the end of her life, I tried to make an intentional change in the questions I asked.
This is what was different now: normal Q&A. “What are you doing this weekend?” “Do you have bridge club today?” “How’s your garden?” “When are you coming to Montgomery?”
Questions like that just weren’t a good fit under the circumstances. But this one question was the one that stood out: “How are you feeling today?” Or the variation: “Are you feeling better?”
There was just so much I was bringing to questions like these, and I knew she knew that. The answer I wanted was something like: “I’m fine. I’m getting better every day. This will be over soon.”
I could feel how complicated this was getting, and I could tell as well that putting pressure on her to give me the answer I wanted to hear wasn’t helpful.
So I tried to discipline myself to change the questions. It wasn’t easy. Because the instinct for “Are you better?” was strong.
I thought of this need to change the questions yesterday after I got home from volunteering with Respite Ministry. (This is the caregiver support ministry at First Methodist, where participants with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia spend four hours enjoying social, recreational and mental engagement while their caregivers get a respite.)
I had read about a storytelling process to create engagement without pressure – designed by an organization called TimeSlips – and I was glad to see that we were going to use that process in one of the activities.
Basically you show an image and ask people to use their imagination and tell a story about the image. It removes the pressure of “remember when we did this?” and creates an opportunity for engagement and interaction by changing the questions.
It’s similar to creative prompts I’ve done many times in coaching groups I’ve been in. You take yourself out of the way you usually do things and ask a different question, and for those moments of creativity, the imagination becomes a source of delight and joy.
It’s not easy to change the questions. But I did hear someone yesterday say, “That was fun. I enjoyed that.” I’m glad I had a chance to see how creativity brings moments of healing.