Life as Charade

We have communication challenges in our home. Rocky has no voice box. He is deaf and getting worse. He has poor eyesight and that is getting weaker. He has Parkinson’s and that reduces his small motor skills like writing, word processing, and yes, walking, standing, sitting.

We get by with his use of an electrolarynx, a glorified buzz box held up to the throat to make a sound which he then shapes with his lips, tongue and hollow spaces in his mouth. They come out as sounds that can be construed as speech. Not always, sadly. So, we augment his communications by lip reading. This is not good due to his Parkinson’s affecting his control over facial and lip muscles. I’ve tried to get him to type simple emails to me but that simply doesn’t work very well. I think it has a lot to do with controlling his finger movements.

In the final gasp of desperation to be understood, we do hand signals and ‘charades.’ If that works, great. If not, we move on to one of the other options.

That got me thinking. Life is filled with actions and body movements that bespeak meaning. Charades is a hilarious game when played with serious intent. But life is often represented by charade actions. At some point, we can wonder if life itself is a charade.

Is that a statement or a question? I’ll take it as a question.

You?

And then there are those whose actions go beyond the game. Putin and Ukraine for example/

March 10, 2022

 

 

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