It was a typical day in the dementia care facility. Soon after I punched in the key code and opened the door to the locked unit, the familiar funny smells of ‘old people’ wafted through the air. I recognized a couple of the wanderers and saw more than one confused face.

I walked a little further down the hall to find my patient.

My timing was impeccable actually. She was agitated, anxious, and searching. I could tell she was triggered by something that had happened a couple of hours ago. She needed me.

“I want to go home! Can you take me there?” She pounded her walker into the floor and shrieked, “I want out of here!”

I paused for a moment and took a breath (as much for myself as for her) and I gently looked into her eyes. I wanted her to know that I saw her.

Gently grasping her hand with a trick I’ve come to call the ‘therapeutic touch’, I validated her feelings. “I see you are upset. I am going to help you,” I said in the calmest, gentlest tone I could muster.

Her eyes reciprocated my approach; she trusted me.

It was at that moment that I smelled it. Her pants were soaked and it was not just #1.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” I just said it.

“Yes!” she said with relief and a bit of surprise as if I had read her mind.

“Let’s go.” I winked and gestured and led her down the long hallway to her memory care apartment, her ‘new home’ which was not really ‘home’ at all.

I helped her use the toilet and change her soiled Depends. She needed a cue to pull her pants down, a cue to sit on the toilet, a cue to stand up and wipe, and a cue to pull her britches back up. I helped her clean up, flush the toilet, and wash her hands.

By the end of all of this, I had a therapy session to document. But perhaps the better achievement was the simple knowledge that I had left her in a better place than I had found her.

She was grateful. Her brain struggled to find the words that her heart communicated so easily. I gave her the credit. “Thank you for letting me help you.“

Her smile said it all. I knew that not only did she feel her dignity was respected, but she felt cared for and nurtured. I knew that when she looked at me, she saw someone similar to the image of her own mother.

In grad school, I was taught that people with dementia often regress to the cognitive and developmental level of a child. This is as true as the grass is green and the sky is blue. In my type of work, this indeed turns the tables and places me in the role of mother to my patients who are often times dependent upon me for their most basic needs.

As an occupational therapist, I get to serve humanity in this way nearly every single day of my full-time working career. Each and every day I go to work, I have the God-given opportunity to love and care for others who are not of my own DNA with a touch of my motherhood, of my ‘feminine genius’, of my very spiritual maternity that is in the heart of every woman. This is a gift.

I may not be a mother in the home at this point in my life, but I am a mother every moment that God chooses to use me as His instrument to love and serve the human beings He entrusts me with.

St. Josemaria Escriva once said, “Add a supernatural motive to your ordinary professional work, and you will have sanctified it.” It took me a few years to figure this one out, but thank God I finally did.

Amidst the toils of the daily grind of serving the elderly, the beauty of my womanhood comes alive and my work becomes a ministry when I allow it to be sanctified by God. It is then that my motherhood takes on a deeply spiritual realm, with supernatural fruits born of my inherent femininity. It is then that I fulfill my deepest vocation. It is then that my motherhood transcends biology.