In coming to terms with her mother’s Alzheimer’s, Jenny Beck is helped by the knowledge her mother is remembered by God.
Alzheimer's.
An estimated 30,000 New Zealanders have this most common form of dementia that makes routine tasks difficult, changes temperament and mood unpredictably and, heartbreakingly, robs the sufferer of language and memory.
Perhaps you, like me, have struggled to come to terms with this dreaded disease in a family member.
It was in 2007 that I started losing my mother.
I noticed a dullness about her eyes, a missing of the point.
Initially it was infuriating.
She would swing away from a conversation abruptly, sometimes mid-sentence.
Once in answer to "What’s the plan for today?" she said, "Don’t Dad’s roses look good today?"
Two years later while visiting Dunedin she said, a minute into the car ride to church, "But where are we going?"
And then fiercely, when my surprised reply didn’t come quickly enough, "Why are you taking me somewhere?"
She couldn’t hold a two-way conversation for long, reason with herself or read a book.
She was endlessly restless, wandering the house after midnight, eating breakfast cereal and conversing loudly with the cats.
That’s the thing about Alzheimer’s: it’s a one-way street.
Her focus had always been outward, so it was hard to accept her distance of spirit and new self-absorption.
At her 80th birthday party in 2011, we her children laughed and reminisced, but also grieved for the super-connected person, the mother she was.
In the words of the poet, "Oh, all our love goes with her".
I made a speech at the party. I recounted Mum’s 40 years in black education. She was entranced, her unspoken response, "Me? Wow! Me!"
Presumably delightful news to her!
As part of the speech, I did the A-Z, words representing aspects of her life or character.
X was a challenge, but my brother Terence came up with the inspired "Xenodochial", being hospitable to strangers.
She’d manifested this quality in abundance.
I said in my speech that Mum knows a faithful Saviour and is heaven-bound.
But ... it’s the meantime that gives pause.
What sort of life is it, we asked one another that day, when your own self is lost to you?I pondered this question when I saw Mum this past March.
Life for her, of course, has deteriorated.
She’s lived in a dementia unit in Johannesburg for four years now.
Her piano-playing, once melodious and resolute, has become a confused jangle.
Fortunately, it still brings her comfort.
It seems she doesn’t recognise me any longer.
I was thrilled when she said, "Darling!" in her old, warm way.
Slightly less thrilled when she addressed the matron thus not two hours later.
Occasionally there are flashes of her familiar spirit.
To my "I’m going to pray now, Mum. Close your eyes!" her rejoinder was, "I don’t have to!"
On another occasion she burst out, "You’re so beautiful!" (not an uncommon compliment!), followed a second later by, "With a red face!"
But those flashes are occasional only.
She’s almost entirely passive; she can’t move unaided, sing or take a comb to her hair.
With tears I was trying not to shed, I realised again that she couldn’t remember herself.
Usually upon leave-taking I’m overwhelmed with the tragedy of Mum’s condition, the loss of all the vibrancy and commitment she brought to life.
In order to cope, I read the Bible to her.
Mum loves the book of Romans, but this departure called for a Psalm.
I read Psalm 73 aloud.
My voice shook dangerously because it seemed I was reading about her.
Her physical flesh and spirit are failing.
But God, I saw as I clutched her hand, remains the strength of her heart and will be her portion forever, scrambled thinking notwithstanding.
I had my answer.
In response to the question, If she has no memories, does she know who she is? my own heart said, It doesn’t matter.
The point isn’t that she is able to recollect her past, or that she can participate actively in life ... or even that she can be aware.
The point is that she’s beloved of God.
To paraphrase John Swinton, she is who God remembers her to be.
Suddenly I saw her amiable acceptance of her condition as a strength and a virtue, a particular way of God-with-her.
All the losses she’s sustained do not in fact undermine her personhood.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it poetically.
When he was in prison in 1945, awaiting execution, he wrote a prayer that ends:
"Who am I?
They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine.’’
I’m trusting that my mother, now that her children’s faces have been wiped from her memory, together seemingly with any recall of her life as Beryl Moll, of Golden Harvest, human being extraordinaire, will know this deep inside her being until the end: that she’s the Lord’s.
- Jenny Beck is a member of Dunedin City Baptist Church.
