By Bill Leonard
Last week we moved Lavelle, my mother, to the Alzheimer’s Care Unit (euphemistically called “Reminiscence Neighborhood”) at her assisted living facility. For the last nine years, two in Texas and seven in North Carolina, she has been in a nursing home, one of the 5.4 million Americans whose illnesses bear the diagnosis of dementia.
The Alzheimer’s Association says that Alzheimer’s disease defines some 80 to 90 percent of all dementia cases. Its early stages include difficulty remembering names, dates and recent events as well as deepening depression and apathy. Later on there may be greater confusion, impaired judgment and mood changes. One slowly forgets how to remember.
My mother has moved through all that, along with other impairments such as the neuropathy which now confines her to a wheelchair. In short, for the last nine years we have watched helplessly as Lavelle and her memory died little by little.
Harry Emerson Fosdick, the great 20th century preacher, called death the “dark mother, ever gliding near with soft feet.” Well, the “dark mother” has been stalking my mother for a long, long time.
I date the trauma from the day she called me out of the blue, staring at the picture of me in academic regalia that sat on her mantle and demanding: “Billy, where did you get your PhD? For some reason, I just can’t remember!” Days later she had a “spell,” as Texans call it, that sent her to the hospital and from there to years of assisted living.
Her neuropathy is so pronounced that both hands remain in a continuously clinched position, allowing the use of only one thumb and forefinger. She has difficulty feeding herself and requires assistance at meals, a reality that precipitated the recent move, perhaps the penultimate phase of her life’s journey. Yet her vital signs remain amazingly robust even as the Alzheimer’s takes its toll.
Her dementia-dominated memory has erased most of the persons and events of her 93 years. The last of seven siblings, she recognizes me at every visit, although she now believes me to be her brother. She smiles readily, eats sparingly, loves sweets dearly, and retains a good dose of the our family’s signature obstinacy when asked to do something she does not wish to do. Her caregivers report that they stay out of her way at such times. One said recently: “She’s still got a lot of fight in her.”
Sometimes scraps of memory bubble up unexpectedly when she speaks of her much beloved mother and two sisters. Ironically, she has neither forgotten the words to many of her favorite hymns nor how to cuss when necessary, two enduring traits of many a good Texas Baptist.
The deacons from our church take Holy Communion to her each first Sunday of the month and one of her dear deacon-caregivers told me recently that they often sing the old hymn “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” during those moments. She sings every word from memory.
After receiving four painful injections in her hand during a recent doctor’s visit, she looked straight at the young physician and commanded me: “Get him the hell out of here.” I hope to remain that defiant at 93.
The dementia, the hymns and the profanity raise nagging questions about life, death and faith as we all age and learn to play a statistical Alzheimer’s roulette. It is amazing, isn’t it, the things that stay in our heads? The story goes that on the day before he died John Wesley sat up in bed and sang every word of the Isaac Watt’s hymn “I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath.” Martin Luther, it is said, ever retaining his characteristic earthiness, declared as death neared: “I’ll lie down in a coffin and give the maggots a fat doctor to eat.”
My longtime friend, the Benedictine monk, Samuel Weber, once told me of the day not long after he was ordained a priest, when he was doing hospital rounds and met a man who identified himself as a “lapsed Catholic” and, manifesting the early stages of dementia, asked how he could be restored to the Church. “What do I need to do, Father?”, the man inquired. “Well,” said Sam, “you should confess your sins and receive absolution. Then I’ll offer you the Eucharist.” “But Father,” the man protested, “I’m fighting dementia. I can’t remember all my sins!” “That’s OK,” Sam replied, “let’s just sit here and talk, and do the best you can.”
Each first Sunday, when the deacons bring my mother Holy Communion and read the words of Jesus: “As often as you do this, remember me,” the text and the ritual take on a whole new meaning that churches should confront as they care for those who no longer recall the old, old story. Since Lavelle and multitudes like her live in remembrance of no one, even Jesus, then perhaps the church — the community of memory — can believe for her, with her as she sings, and even cusses a little, all the way to the end. Let’s all try to remember that, as long as we can.