Oakbrook Terrace 'memory tree' helps patients remember the good times
CHICAGO (CBS) – A Christmas tree at Terra Vista of Oakbrook Terrace is not just any tree.
In this case, it's also therapeutic, used to try to jump start the brain. CBS 2's Lauren Victory showed us how it's providing some hope for the holidays.
Memory care residents at Terra Vista often get lost in a flurry of thoughts.
This holiday season, Rita Kroenert was happy to find a way to connect with her brother.
"Remember this?" she asked him.
It's an ornament of his past.
"Oh yeah!" Mike Morgan said.
"It's the Sears Tower."
"That's a long time ago," he said.
Morgan was an iron worker who helped build one of Chicago's tallest buildings, the Willis Tower, which he knows as the Sears Tower.
"I was on one of the welding gangs," he said.
The holiday decoration helps bring him back, before his dementia started.
"It was a big part of your life, wasn't it?" Kroenert asked her brother. "Working on that building?"
"Four years," Morgan responded.
Conversations like these were sparked by tree trimmings representing careers, hobbies and interests. They're happening every day at Terra Vista.
A red car elicited such a positive reaction that it was featured in a family Christmas card. The patient touching the "memory tree" in a photo on the card used to drive a red Camaro.
"With some of our residents that may be more late stage, you are just talking about moments," said Mark Davis, the director of customer care at Terra Vista. "Moments where they remember and are able to crack a smile or shed a tear."
Kroenert recalled her brother's first time seeing his specially-picked ornament.
"'Oh my God! This is so beautiful.' And then he started to tell me a little bit more about when he was working on it," she said. "So it was wonderful to see."
The tree has other uses as well.
Victory: "Can you think of a way you can use this tree beyond a memory care facility?"
Davis: "Children, siblings, husbands and wives can all use this particular item, in this case an ornament, to bring them back to a happy time."
Perhaps that's a happy time working, or happy time together.
