The Fence Visit

 As I've been mulling over my visit with mom,

I've realized how she's come to the stage of the disease 

that I knew was coming, but could not bear to think about.

Add Covid 19 distancing ... and it can just break your heart.

As I've read about the seven stages of Alzheimer's 

- ironically taking over the past seven years as well - 

I've pictured her in each of them. 

From undetectable,

to telling me she was forgetting things, while I thought it normal.

I laughed that she missed her appoinment at the Memory Specialist.

Next came some unexpected habit breaking -
due to her inability to create order,

everything was a mess around her.

Telling her what time I'd pick her up was immediately forgotten.

There were frustrations on both sides,

because this was not really her.

She knew .... and she thought she was disappointing us.

Stage five, she needed help dressing

and it just got to be too much trouble, so she didn't bother,

having no sense of season or what was appropriate.
Pictures and mirrors played tricks with her -

causing illusions of time and circumstances to confuse her more.

To my dear mom, it was torture. 

It was probably around stage six when we moved her,

with no recollection of where she had come from.

She moved into a wheelchair, had to be fed, 

bathed and put to bed by a Care Aide. 

There were still times she laughed,

found the words of familiar hymns,

and told me that she loved me.

This year has brought her to the final stage. 

I read for more ... but there is no more.

Except for what I know to be true,

a sense of anticipation for her,

to know that her next stage is release from this earthly tent,

and a home prepared in heaven.

Yes, we grieve, but not as though we have no hope.

I was so happy to see Julene and Kristal join me on Friday afternoon.

 Monika and Rosie came as well.

We sang, we prayed for her, we laughed and we cried.

 So good, that each of us knows who she really is

and what a blessing she has been to us. 

 Every once in a while she'd look up ...

she seemed to love good laghter

and songs from way back brought a distant yearning to her eyes.

We all struggle with why certain things happen ...

this is life, imperfect and temporal.

Our only hope is to look to what is eternal.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror,

then we shall see face to face.

Now I know in part, then I shall know fully,

even as I am fully known.

1. Corinthians 13: 12