A Long Good-bye (Part One)

“Who’s that girl over there?”

I’m standing at the stove making tea. Mom is a couple of feet away, sitting at the kitchen table with Dad.

“That’s our daughter,” he tells her. “Jeanne.”

And this is the new reality. Her face a distorted mask of fear, confusion, and frustration. The endless stream of questions that circle around and around but never land — like a bewildered dove, lost in the fog, and wasn’t there once an ark and a warm nest, and why can’t I find my way back there?

These eyes that embraced my newborn face, that delighted in my first steps — that read aloud innumerable pages, the words inviting me into Alice’s Wonderland and the Secret Garden and the Hundred Acre Wood, expanding my horizons and giving my imagination wings. These once passionate eyes, that smoldered at my willful disobedience and glowed at my simple accomplishments, now dull. Suspicious. Distant.

Or angry. And she lashes out with cruel, unfiltered words, mocking, accusing, working herself into a fury. “I don’t understand any of this! I don’t need a babysitter! Why don’t you just go home! Go home!”

I steady my voice, try to explain that I’m not there to babysit but to keep her company, and I’m not going home until Dad gets back. She snorts her disgust, snatches her walker, and retreats to her last safe place, hobbling into her bedroom, disappearing into the oblivion of sleep. And I collapse on the couch, my heart all one aching prayer. Jesus, meet her in her dreams. You know what she needs. Please, come Lord Jesus, and meet her in her dreams.

Once upon a time, I wrote a song just for them — a thank you for countless gifts given and a prayer for only good to come — and George and I recorded it on my twenty-first birthday. The chorus echoed a childhood bedtime routine, a dialog that played out night after night, with their, “We love you, Jeanne,” and my, “I love you, too.” Then “Sweet dreams, now” and “Same to you.” And I’m back there in my mind, bowed bedside on little knees, praying the Lord my soul to keep.

And if I die before I wake?

When we’re alone, she often asks me if Dad is dead, but one day after I said no, she asked, “Am I dead?” And I wonder, can the fog get so thick that waking feels closer to death than sleep?

The song’s last chorus ended with, “It’s not just Jeanne loving you, sweet Jesus loves you, too. And I pray He’ll bless Mommy and Daddy forever, Amen.” She played that recording for anyone who would listen; played it again and again until the cassette tape wore out, and there wasn’t another copy, and how is it that we treat our memories so carelessly, as though they, like God’s blessing, will last forever?

Sweet dreams, now.

Oh, God. Please.

I spend part of almost every day with her, but these furtive, frightened eyes, they rarely recognize me now. Rarely, yes, but there are still moments when I crack a joke, and she laughs out loud, and she turns and looks at me — sees me — and the happy years dance in her eyes again, like a hint of a wisp of the splendid energy that marked my childhood home, where banter begot banter, and we laughed until tears flowed and our tummies ached.

It flickers there, a spark, and I grasp the moment for what it is.

A gift.

Because I’m learning that each moment is the only one, and I beg God for wisdom, for creativity, for the right words that will comfort and calm, but all He keeps whispering is enter these moments with her. So I lean hard into grace, and I try.

We sit in the same kitchen where seven-year-old me packed her lunch-box — the pink one with the black poodle on the front — and it was PB and J on Mrs. Baird’s Bread and Lay’s Potato Chips and a baggie filled with Chips Ahoy. I open the pantry and can almost see the colorful row of cereal boxes — froot loops, and that silly rabbit, and I could honestly use a few lucky charms about now — but today those shelves are much less crowded and chaotic. Pistachios and prunes. Olive oil. A bottle of wine. This kitchen where she worked the NY Times crossword puzzle every morning, and slapped together hamburger helper for dinner, and all six of us sat in the orange molded-plastic chairs around the Formica-topped table, arguing or singing or sharing adventures from the day. It was loud and safe, a place where children were not only seen, they were heard and celebrated.

I was seen. Heard. Celebrated.

And now, almost fifty years later, those orange plastic chairs and that same round table remain — but the children are grown and have children who have children, and she sits alone in her place, her eyes shifting here and there, and she asks me, “Is this our house?”

“Yes,” I say. “You and Dad live here together.”

She looks again, slow, searching deep, and when she asks the next question, my heart is as tortured as her face.

“Why don’t I recognize it?”

I don’t answer, because I don’t know.

I don’t know why God leads some of us into dense fog at the end of life’s journey. I don’t know why the Alzheimer’s-afflicted suffer a long, slow fade, slipping farther and farther away, while those who love and care for them watch and grieve and offer comfort that can never cure. But who am I to question His goodness or demand that He give different gifts?

No, I don’t know the why, but I know the Who — that there is a God who knits us together in our mothers’ wombs and numbers our days, and no, I’m not equal to this, but I haven’t been equal to a lot of things God has chosen for me, and He has proven Himself faithful and immeasurably more in them all. I’ve learned to trust His ways — to keep my eyes open for the beauty that He always creates out of His children’s brokenness, the beauty that He must create because He is Redeemer, and everything He touches He makes free.

I’m not equal to this, and that is part of the gift. His strength in my weakness. His sufficient grace. If I could see my way clearly, what need would there be to reach for Him? So then. Even the fog is a gift.

I enter these moments with her, and I can’t see the next step in front of me, but this one thing I do have.

I can feel the pressure of His hand in mine, and it is enough.

* * *

{Dear friends, I haven’t written much about my mom’s Alzheimer’s, but lately I’ve been sensing that I need to wrap words around this journey. I don’t know how often I’ll come back to it, but future posts in this vein will also be titled A Long Good-bye, mostly for the sake of anyone who would rather not go there. Believe me, I know it’s hard. But this is where I live right now, and words are the way I process. As I expected, writing this post was cathartic for me. I pray it’s a blessing to someone else, too. Thank you for understanding.}