Touchy-feely art

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Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 | A&E, Best Of, Home Life |

This article - Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons To Touch Paintings - brought back a memory.

Seven or so years ago I took my mom to a Rodin exhibit in Knoxville. I think her sight was starting to fail even back then and I noticed her reaching out to touch the sculpture.

She did it again, running her hand over the statue’s face. “Uh, mom, you’re not supposed to touch that.” At some point a person at the museum noticed and told her she couldn’t touch the Rodins. Mom acted sheepish and didn’t touch any more sculptures.

Looking back it’s clear she was suffering from the beginnings of macular degeneration. She’s almost completely blind at this point, and has been for some time.

Now I wonder if she was beginning to succumb to vascular dementia, too. People with dementia decline over a long period of time. It’s hard to recognize, especially in the early stages, and it can happen so slowly over so many years that you barely notice. And of course you don’t want to believe it is what it is, because it’s painful to think about.

It was only a few years ago that I had to admit mom’s mind was getting cloudy. It was less than a year ago that it became perfectly clear to everyone that something was really wrong. Even then we blamed it on medication, thinking that she’d be back to her old self once she got out of transitional care and got off of sedatives. It’s only been six months or so since we all finally admitted that mom wasn’t going to be her old self anymore and would need someone caring for her for the rest of her life.

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