SHHHHH I DO NOT HAVE ALZHEIMERS. 2026 by LINDA MARY MONTANO

________________________________________   SHHHHHHHH. I DO NOT HAVE ALZHEIMERS. 2026. by LINDA MARY MONTANO DISCLAIMER: SHHHHH I DO NOT have Dementia. I occasionally forget words and names. Who doesn’t at 84? This essay is an invitation to embrace transform let go of Dementia fear because maybe it’s a good thing to have a Demented empty mind? SHHHHHHH.   Who wants to sit for centuries on a hard cushion in a meditation center to obtain coveted mental spaciousness when the mind itself can produce the Big Emptying all by itself? Shhhhh. What I am saying is this: IS ALZHEIMERS a work free way and technique to create a worry free mind?  SHHHHHHH So fear OF Alzheimer’s,  begone! If Alzheimers is to be my fate, I dance the fearless dance of BRING IT ON!!!   I say bring it on because  I have performed, sang, danced and therapeutically analyzed via art all of my life challenges. So now in my 80’s, I realized that it was probably time for me to begin thinking about my personal ENDGAME and so for months at the 3 and 4 am insomnia hours I heard myself ask myself, “Oh no, how will I die”!!! SHHHHHHH  Shhhhh  Convincing myself that this thinking was appropriate for my age, I went down the shopping list of possibilities and wondered if it would be the big C? Cancer.  A fall or head trauma?  a car accident? Heart? or Taa Daah the scariest for me: DEMENTIA ALZHEIMERS? I am ALWAYS  the art fixer, the aesthetic medicine applier, the self taught art therapist, the one who thrived on creatively addressing her shadow, the one who could video the pain away the one who could write a beginners Haiku and feel better once it was saved in her Haiku Book, the one who sang the monsters away, I wondered if I could address this possible new challenge of “Oh no, I’m losing my mind”!!!SHHHHHHH DON’T TELL ANYONE!   Every forgotten name, address, phone number egged me onto my new project which is to make dementia not such a bad thing. My task was fixing it using the only skill I have which is ART. Having begun my research by always taking care of sick family and friends, I made myself livable with the idea of mind-losing by making a video thanks to Toby, Jim, Laura Kopczak and Josepha Gutelius titled NURSE NURSE,  which was dedicated to CNA’s and as a difficult forgetting person in the video, I posited that an Angelic Divineness could appear and rescue difficult.  performer me from making the CERTIFIED NURSING ASSISTANT’S  life Hell IN THE NURSING HOME WHEN I GET THERE  Shhhhhhhh.  That was then, this is now and I’m 84  And I’m thinking about not the overworked/underpaid nursing home nurse  this time, instead I’m considering my fear and trembling at the embarrassment of possibly running nude down the street I live on  in Saugerties, shhhhhh and I think about the possibility of my addled dementiaed-self driving to Woodstock and forgetting how to get back home, I think about the possibility of sending in my Central Hudson bill and inserting a blank check in the return envelope. And I’m thinking worse than these possibilities and in good self therapy fashion, warning myself that I’m actually planting some real interesting internal disaster,  screenplay possibilities for the time when friends text each other and agree that, “Wow, Linda has really lost it. There’s zilch life in her eyes and she is not only zig-zag walking, but did you notice when she.......” Fill in the blank. shhhhhhhh  There are tons of options. You’ve got the picture, right? And we haven’t even mentioned diapers yet. So here is my current DEUS EX MACHINA, my HAPPY PLACE when I consider, think about, terrorize myself with ghoulish thoughts about my newest fear, early onset Alzheimers. It goes like this. I say to myself: 1. Linda, how many years have you been involved in the “spiritual” game, path, community, practice. I answer myself with, “Many.  Always.”  2. Linda, you are devoted to the possibility of your changing adjusting expanding understanding forgiving enlightening this mind via all of the 8654 practices you impose on it, right? I answer myself with, “I guess maybe you are right.” 3. Linda, so let’s suppose that if you do “catch” Alzheimers, you will be on the fast track to an EMPTY, CLEAR, UNIMPEDED MIND.  Isn’t that a good thing? That’s what you have wanted all along: to become ONE with the Mystical Body of Christ, to finally be judgment free and expansive, to graduate to Non-dual awareness, to be ENLIGHTENED! I answer this with, “I guess you are right.” 4. Linda, plus, think of the practical pluses of no-mind: no more having to call the heater company when the furnace goes off in the winter, no more wondering who is scamming you online, no more so so much. I answer this with, “You’re probably right.”shhhhhhhh right I won’t care because my mind will not remember to care.  Yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 5. Linda, here is the clincher, I promise you if you de-fear Alzheimers, take the Monster out of it, if you courage up and face it her - she whatever it is appropriate to call this mind taking condition, if you promise to laugh hard and loud with and at it, if you draw it, shout with it, DANCE with it then it will be just another luck of the draw. Shhhhhhh No matter what, you’re LEAVING DODGE. You are incrementally dying moment by moment. Why not go out dancing with and by yourself as a chicken woman, as an ex hippie elder, and hopefully play game less games with anyone else in the NURSING HOME willing to join. I answer with, “Why do you think I practice daily Chicken Dances? “  Shhhhhhhhhhh.  Shhhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhh