Dealing with a loved one’s sickness can be painful for the ill as well as the caregiver.
For Jonathan Perkins, his mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis fueled his poetry, allowing him to cope with her pain as well as his.
“My mother was so smart and that was one of the most crushing things about it, watching that deteriorate,” he told the Columbus Ledge-Enquirer. “She could read about three of four books in a day. She was just a book fanatic.”
With the help of a grant, Perkins created “Journey Here,” a one-man show to honor his mother, the paper reported.
“The only way I could talk about my mother was through a poem,” he said. “That’s how my friends knew what was going on.”
Perkins took care of his mother from her diagnosis in 2009 to her death last year. Following her death, he continued to perform his poetry.
Perkins described his show as “comedy, it’s drama, it’s social justice.”
“It talks about addiction, a lot of things that are happening right here under our noses,” he told the paper.
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