There is a residence for the elderly in Minnesota that is reducing the amount of antipsychotic drugs they dish out. For people with dementia, hard core pharmacy is one way to stop behaviors that the staff find problematic. Yet the medications have side effects. Patients become lethargic. Others stop talking altogether. My mother swallowed a small mountain of those pills on her path of mania, and the way it flattened her made me cry. 

The nursing home mentioned in the article I read made a goal of lowering their use of strong drugs by 15%. They dropped by 97% without a struggle. 

People who forget things tend to go looking for them. The trouble is they don't always remember what they are looking for. The staff set up drawers with all manner of recipes, old hats and trinkets that would be interesting to find. The patients were charmed. With fewer drugs, they talked more, and were less agitated. 

Marriages sometimes lose things. Spontaneity, flirting, unconditional forgiveness come easily in the beginning, and as time drones on we absentmindedly forget that kindness was fun. We trade them in for feistiness and the need to have things our own way. 

I like the idea of hiding things around the house for John to find. For the month of December I am doing it with the twins. Each day I hide a pair of angels and they hunt for them. Their memories are intact, so I don't need to remind them of the prize. With John it may work to hide things he is not expecting. 

But to do that I will need to reclaim those attributes that once came easily.