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Crossing Bridges Across Generations

Crossing Bridges Across Generations Program Transcript

NARRATOR: Every journey is a crossing-- a crossing of distance, of terrain, or of a bridge. A movement-- ordinary or adventuresome, pleasurable or frightful. Sometimes from the familiar world into a different world, a world that exceeds in width, or depth, or mystery, the old former limits of our imagination.

Teenagers crossing from childhood to adulthood with family bonds often fractured. Young people today are asked to embrace change at disorienting speed. But at whatever speed, can we ever really know ourselves without knowing where we come from?

What crossing are you part of? Where do you come from? What are the stories, the old wisdom, or the old youthful foolishness of the generations that came before you? What crosses from the past to the future through you?

The Memory Bridge Initiative in Chicago brings together generations by connecting students from city schools with people in Alzheimer's care facilities in an exchange that continues for weeks, sometimes for years. An exchange not mediated by iPods or emails, but by voices, hands, faces, physical presence. The students strive for kinship and common ground with people who at first seem pretty much completely different from themselves. By trying to cross bridges between generations, these young students discover in the old people that the boundaries of someone's identity can be far different and far more expansive than we may believe.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Hey, Ruth. How have you been?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Hm?

FEMALE SPEAKER: How have you been?

FEMALE SPEAKER: No good.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Why?

FEMALE SPEAKER: I haven't been any good, not since I broke my leg.

FEMALE SPEAKER: What happened?

FEMALE SPEAKER: I fell down.

FEMALE SPEAKER: From where?

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Crossing Bridges Across Generations

FEMALE SPEAKER: Time don't mean anything to me. I don't know where or when I fell. I've had this problem for quite a while.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Can you tell me about Emery?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Emery was the only boy that I ever had a crush on.

FEMALE SPEAKER: You liked him a lot? You didn't marry him?

FEMALE SPEAKER: No, my dad wouldn't let me.

FEMALE SPEAKER: So what did he do? What did Emery do?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Well, some other girl was chasing him. So finally, he told her sisters, he said, well, I guess if I can't have who I want, I might as well take somebody who wants me. So he married her, and they had two children. And she died just before he did.

MICHAEL VERDE: The idea for Memory Bridge is that there are ways we can respond creatively and compassionately to this neurological disorder so that people never have to be severed from one another.

NARRATOR: Students meet once a week for two hours in classes of different sizes and work through the Memory Bridge curriculum that's been developed with the advice of experts from across the country.

TEACHER: I want to thank you so much for participating in this program. We did this last year, and it was a really wonderful program. I'm back again this year, because I enjoyed it so much.

You will be receiving a buddy-- your buddy. We're going to visit our buddy four times throughout the 12-week program.

STUDENT: My buddies are Gene and Anna-- which she has the same name as I do.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Hi, my name is Anna. [INAUDIBLE] Nice to meet you.

NARRATOR: During these visits, the students meet with, spend time with, do projects and activities with the person with Alzheimer's disease with whom the student is partnered. These partnerships are referred to as "buddies."

JOYCE MOLINO: The Memory Bridge Initiative was a wonderful program for us to participate here at Alden Town Manor. The benefits for the children were obvious from an educational standpoint. But from our standpoint and from my residents' sake, the primary benefit was the connections-- the connections with

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the children. It afforded my residents the opportunities to regain their dignity and audience as elders.

MALE SPEAKER: Did you have any husbands?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Two.

MALE SPEAKER: Two?

FEMALE SPEAKER: The first one was a bum. I paid, and he ate. He ate, and I paid. Divorced him, like this. My second husband was French. Oh, he was [KISSING SOUND] wonderful man.

JOYCE MOLINO: I think this program has left an indelible mark on these children. I couldn't be happier. I wish I could have this for every one of my residents every single day of every single year. Because they attended to their souls. We attend to their bodies, and that's our jobs. But these children nourished their souls.

TEACHER: What are two forms of memory?

STUDENT: Long-term.

TEACHER: Long-term, and--?

STUDENT: Short.

SANDRA BAST: This program itself increases the sensitivity and increases the awareness of self and of community and valuing human relationships.

STUDENT: Is it true that you remember every aspect of your life, like every part of your daily living?

JENNIFER GREEN: I believe that the Memory Bridge Program is a very innovative program, because it allows the students to practice what they're learning in the classroom.

NARRATOR: During the 12-week program, a guest speaker who has early onset Alzheimer's disease is invited to the class and tells the students something about what life is like after diagnosis.

TEACHER: OK, you guys, this is so exciting. We have our first guest speaker of the Bridges Initiative program.

DON MOYER: We've been participating with the CNBI program for two years now, and it turned out to be more fun than we thought it would be.

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Yeah.

STUDENT: If you didn't have Alzheimer's, do you think you would be travelling more?

JENNY KNAUSS: I don't know. Could you answer that question?

DON MOYER: Probably. Somebody asked us, how has Alzheimer's changed your life? And we said, it's been an upgrade. [LAUGHING] Because I don't have to work as hard as I used to do. And I have time for lots of fun things.

And your grandfather used to read to you about faraway places that you might go to someday. Have I got that right?

JENNY KNAUSS: Yes, absolutely.

DON MOYER: What do you remember about it?

JENNY KNAUSS: Oh, I remember he used to put me on his knee and show me where different places were on a great big-- you know, what do you call it?

DON MOYER: Map?

JENNY KNAUSS: Map. Great, big map.

Alzheimer's changed my life really quite a lot, because it made me think more clearly. The fact that Alzheimer's came along didn't stop me. It pushed me further. So it made me happy, in a way, to think that we had this opportunity to try to dig in more with the disease. And find out better and better ways for people to live happily with the disease.

HEATHER CHILSON: I think some of the benefits of this program are it stops the gap from widening between our generation and the older generation. Because these are people, you know? You can make real life connections to what you're learning in these classes.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Do you have, like, a little story you can tell us?

FEMALE SPEAKER: No. That's about it. Like I said, I used to be heavy. And my brother used to call me fat Dorothy.

And every time he would call me that, I would cry and I'd go find my father. And he would punish him, and make him do the dishes, and make him sweep the floor. [LAUGHING] And those memories stick with you, you know?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah.

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FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah.

MICHAEL VERDE: I think it's fair to say there are institutional and social factors that lead to people with dementia being cut out of community, being cut out of communication that makes them a part of the community. And I don't think it has to be that way.

JOYCE MOLINO: The transformation in my residents over the period that we ran this program, the growth in the children, is something that needs to continue. It's my belief that it needs to continue, and it needs to be broadened. One child to one resident-- that's a powerful thing. We've shown that here.

MICHAEL VERDE: All roads-- all the curricular roads-- the reading, the writing, the learning of the science, the brain, the memory-- all of those roads go back to this ultimate goal of building a friendship where there wasn't one. And in many ways, I think this puts what we do in the classroom in its ultimately most meaningful place. That is the structure. I think it's also the magic of Memory Bridge.

LISA SNYDER: We need to be able to respond to people who are different than we are, who may not think the same way, who may not be able to communicate the same way. Who may not have the same sense of "reality" that we do. We need to all be able to figure out ways to communicate with one another and to coexist. And a person with Alzheimer's can provide us a tremendous opportunity to do that.

ROM HARRE: In all kinds of ways, other people take part with us in making us what we are. We don't just evolve in a kind of isolated way. We live in communities. Not just our language which we have to learn, but all the other things that make us who we are.

STANLEY HAUERWAS: In American life, we think we are most free when we don't need anyone. And exactly, Alzheimer's represents is the absolute dependency that we are. And that's what we all need to learn-- of how deeply we need one another. Not just for food, which is a big deal. But we need one another for even knowing who we are.

MICHAEL VERDE: Because if we're all crossing bridges to and fro, and we're all bringing back things that we're discovering, and we're sharing them with each other, then we have a collective enterprise here. We're all learning from one another's very unique experiences. And consequently, we're getting a more comprehensive picture of what it means to be a human being.

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Crossing Bridges Across Generations Content Attribution

Memory Bridge (Producer). (n.d.). There Is a Bridge [DVD]. USA: Memory Bridge.

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