Being An Emotional and Cognitive Buddy

I have been thinking lately of the people I have met in all the nursing homes and senior living communities I have visited. Wow, what a privilege I have had. What a gift to uncover these humans, who are sometimes not seen.

I like to shine a light on them.

I’m thinking of my friend June, whom I met while I was volunteering at a nursing home. June lived with dementia and I would visit her every week and we would just hang out together. June told me how she was a former model, and also that she owned a dress shop for many years. She was very interested in fashion, so I would bring fashion magazines. We would look through them and comment on different styles.

June was very astute and I loved hearing her commentaries on both the outfits and the women who were wearing them. She was very in tune to their moods. “She certainly looks excited,” she would say and point to the model. “Oh my, she does not look happy with that,” she would frown.

I also learned that she loved parakeets and had several throughout her life. In fact, she had bred them. So I would pull up videos of parakeets on YouTube and we would look at them together, which just delighted her. I told her about my parakeet, Abu-Dabi “Larry” Bird (who we called Boo). And then about our cockatiel, Englebird Humperdinck, who I got for my husband as a birthday gift. Unfortunately, Englebird felt like I was his person, rather than my husband, so he would just peck at my husband incessantly when he got too close. This also delighted her.

She told me about her ex-husband, who she said was “good for nothing”. She said other things too about his character, but I cannot print them here. She told me how she “kicked him to the curb and never looked back”. I liked thinking of June all dressed up in her beautiful clothes, surrounded by her beautiful birds, slamming the door on this person who hurt her.

I really enjoyed getting to know June.

One day, as I was saying goodbye to her, she grabbed my hand, looked into my soul, and told me,

“You know, you’re my emotional and cognitive buddy.”

Wow. My heart just about exploded. Is that not the highest praise?

I would never have come up with that phrase on my own. It was perfect.

In my mind, she was telling me a few things. She was telling me about the value of our emotional connection. Maybe she was noticing that I was really interested in what she thought about things. That I wanted to hear what she had to say. I think she was interested in what I thought too. Perhaps she felt that I was a person that she could feel and think with.

Overall, I think she was saying that I got her.

What a beautiful, and unexpected, way of articulating our friendship.

She was my emotional and cognitive buddy too.

Shortly after, I went in to visit June and she wasn’t there in her room. I tried to ask the staff where she had gone. They weren’t really sure. They think she was transferred somewhere else, is all they said.

Transferred. Like a package. A package with beautiful ideas and vocabulary.

I was astounded and hurt that no one was able to tell me where she went. No one even thought of telling me that she wasn’t there anymore. I had been visiting her weekly for about six months.

It struck me that this was probably because nobody noticed I was even spending time with her. I don’t know that anyone noticed June in general.

This was a place where many of the people who worked there seemed to have pretty limited interaction with the people who lived there. I can’t fault them because this was the culture of this place. Probably no one was their emotional and cognitive buddy either. It was very institutional, so, it’s not surprising that the general milieu of the place was not based on connection but disconnection.

Still, it was somewhat devastating to me. Did they not know how beautiful this idea was – to be emotional and cognitive buddies?

I felt grief because this was a real loss to me. I was angry too. They did not see her. Maybe they did not think about where she went because they didn’t think she was there in the first place. How could anyone possibly think a person like June is no longer there, a shell, incapable? You don’t tell people about them being your emotional and cognitive buddy when you are not there.

I am at a place now where I feel sad for the people who were around her in that nursing home, who missed the chance to be June’s emotional and cognitive buddy. .

What does it mean to be a emotional and cognitive buddy? I can’t be sure. But knowing June, I feel like she was expressing this beautiful idea of how we make each other feel seen. June was needing to be seen, and her telling me that I saw her was so powerful to me. It made me feel seen too.

I didn’t just care about June (being an emotional buddy). I was also genuinely curious about her (being a cognitive buddy). And she did the same for me. I can’t stop thinking of how “an emotional and cognitive buddy” is such a great description of something so undefined. June was brilliant.

Do you have an emotional and cognitive buddy? Are you an emotional and cognitive buddy to someone? How do you know?

I never saw June again. I hope someone else is being her emotional and cognitive buddy.

Thanks, June, for being mine. I didn’t get a chance to tell her that, but I think she knew.