Forgetting
Someone dear to me is watching her mother disappear into Alzheimer’s one excruciating piece at a time. We reconnected briefly last week after several months and I could hear it in her voice—the mix of hollow fatigue and grateful determination to be that calm landing place, the privilege of blurring the line between daughter and caregiver and bearing the weight of that unusual, awkward role-switching. I kept listening, pushing aside the hard memories of the front seat I had for my father’s similar descent. It needed to be all about her. Nothing else mattered but listening and validating, seeing her and listening more. I nodded as her voice cracked and handed over my heart to her in silent solidarity. There are no words anywhere that would make this better, not even one inch.
I’m humbled and encouraged by her raw honesty, how she’s naming and claiming the emotions that threaten to engulf her and take her far away from her husband and children who also feel her nurturing touch in their lives. Her children are watching and learning. I imagine them remembering as adults the view they currently have of their mother tending to the impossible and showing them what love looks like in that moment.
On my walk this morning, I saw a young buck and a doe on the path parallel to the thick dark green woods. We stopped and considered each other, myriad options for what would happen next. The buck’s velvety rack caught a glint of sunrise while the doe took to browsing for a split second, her eye still trained on me and my two walking sticks. I gave my best imitation of a chuffing sort of snort, like they do when they meet up with their own kind, and the buck immediately leapt into the wall of sheltering trees, swallowed up by their mystery. I didn’t hear his hooves hit the ground or break any fallen branches. He just…disappeared. The doe raised her head, looked at me and then in the direction of her companion and, without panic, moved gracefully to join him. I continued my steps, wondering if I’d even seen them at all.
It wasn’t until I got to the path through the open field-becoming-young-woods that I realized I’d forgotten all about the load of heavy throw rugs I’d tossed in the washer before heading out, and how I’d set up my breakfast things so they’d be ready when I returned. I’d forgotten completely that I even lived in a house, that it and the cars and the cats probably still existed while I was out adding images of this cherished and unimaginably beautiful place to my bank of precious and impermanent memories. To leave sizeable chunks of our daily routines and commitments behind and trust that they’ll be there when we need to call them up again and move on with our lives…the word “gift” doesn’t even come close.
Alzheimer’s takes away what we take for granted—the ability to not be frantically focused on the data streaming at us, trying to sift through it for anything reassuringly familiar, the ease of setting aside even the most important projects and people in our lives to be immersed in the present moment. Some who struggle with dementia eventually cross over into that place of “pleasantly confused” but getting there can be brutal, leaving those of us watching and caring on the sidelines shredded in anticipatory terror that one day, there too we shall walk. It’s all we can do not to look, or run, away.
But love asks that we stay. And so we do. We go with the flow of a muddled sentence trying to recapture a tattered story, agreeing that yes, dad, that’s just the way it happened. We answer the same question eleven times as if it were the first time, with sincerity or surprise or whatever will relax a loved one’s furrowed brow and trembling hands. We no longer put out forks and spoons because it really isn’t any big deal to eat with your fingers (that’s why washcloths were created, right)? And we find a quiet place to cry alone when she can’t remember who we are, her eyes wide as she searches our face for clues that never come. For now, it’s enough just to be together because she’s in there somewhere. We’ll stay and wait and keep looking for her.
In the field this morning, I remembered that I could forget. And I’ll remember that for as long as I can, because this morning, someone dear to me is waking up and doing what love asks her to do.
