Books, movies and television shows that use time travel as a literary device are perennial science fiction favorites. It can be mind-bending to explore the idea of nonlinear time.
I recently had what felt to be an experience of this kind while traveling in the North Carolina mountains. As I ascended the mountain road higher and higher, the trees changed from full foliage to bare-limbed. It was mid-May, and at the base of the mountains, the deciduous trees’ branches were decked in their full summer garb. As I gained altitude, I noticed that the trees’ leaves were now a beautiful spring green. Higher yet, they were just beginning to leaf out, with only the tips of leaves and buds showing. At 5000 feet or more, the trees sported their winter-bare branches. The temperature declined as I rose, going from summer’s warmth, to winter’s chill in a matter of minutes.
It was fascinating to experience this gradual rolling back of the seasons, the promise of spring always present because I was approaching it, or I had just passed through it. At the wintry peak, the images of spring and summer were still fresh in my mind. I had traveled backwards through six month’s worth of time. It happened so quickly, that it almost felt as if I were seeing and living in all those month’s time periods simultaneously.
When I was five years old, a friend told me that she was getting younger instead of older with time. I was fascinated that she had already experienced adulthood, and that we were just crossing paths on her way to infancy. She really had me believing her. When I told my mother about this amazing phenomenon, she scoffed. Soon after, my friend moved to a new city, and I was able to hold onto that fantasy for several years.
When I saw the movie, Benjamin Buttons, that memory reappeared, and I marveled at the imagination my friend had and at my child-self’s ability to believe the possibility.
Then I watched my husband travel back in time as his Alzheimer’s disease progressed. Obviously, it wasn’t as quick as my mountain climb, and it was faster than Benjamin Buttons’ time travel, but over the eight years of his disease, I watched Harvey regress from adult, to adolescent, to child, to infant.
When I found the Functional Assessment Scale Test (FAST) online, with the duration of stages and age equivalents in each stage, it clicked. Someone had actually done the research to assign an approximate chronological age to each of the seven stages of Alzheimer’s disease in this particular scale. Here is a sample chart.
And it really helped me interact with Harvey more appropriately when I made the realization that he had the mind of a child, or a toddler, or an infant. I was careful not to I infantilize him, but I could play with him as if he were a child, shooting hops, playing catch, or batting balloons. If I spoke to him in simple language, he could better understand me. I was meeting him where he was on his journey back in time.
Unlike the story my five year old friend told, and Benjamin Buttons, whose bodies were aging in reverse, it is the cognitive abilities of a person living with Alzheimer’s that are reversing. When you realize that, you can better appreciate the beauty of the springtime of childhood that your loved one might be living in.