***I write this to in some way remember my mother and in some small other way to remember myself and how my own experiences with dementia have been held and understood. Everyone’s experiences with dementia are so different, I offer no insight except my own small experience. This article is not for everyone, feel free to scroll on by. It’s a bit longer, I apologize.
If you knew my mother and how she set a beautiful table, glorious Lenox china with the pink rose in the middle and the matching gold rimmed or pink rimmed lenox crystal service, how she artfully presented floral arrangements that would make any florist proud at the center of her table, how she served up food on glorious platters, deliciously prepared and served with similar attention. This is the way she fed her loved ones around her own table – fed us not just beautifully prepared food, but oh how she served up love and acceptance and grace that nourished me more than her food ever did.
My mom’s table holds a depth of memory for me far beyond the taste of food, truly into the taste of love itself. So, this is how I hold my experiences with dementia – at a table, mostly my mother’s – it helps me give context to unexplainable losses that have come alongside dementia, and to a streak of beauty that I can’t deny in the midst of it.
Another table I must mention, one of my favorite tables I’ve ever sat at is my grandparent’s round kitchen oak table. I have vivid memories of that table in my grandparent’s kitchen – the tiny square nook with high pine paneled walls, small windows above the paneling, and the table barely fitting into the nook requiring everyone who wanted a seat at the table to squish in between and around people, and, finally, cram oneself into the oak spindle chairs tightly fitted beneath it. It was worth the fight! It was the people that sat around that table that made it special and the way they made me feel when I was there.
My grandpa was always at his place at the table, always with a smile and frequently holding his pipe, even when it wasn’t lit. His greeting to me upon my arrival was always the same – “We have the best grandkids in the world!”, he chuckled the words. He meant it and I believed it. He said it often enough.
My grandparents bore a close resemblance to Santa and Mrs. Claus – they were both short and round, my grandpa’s face was always jolly and his rounded cheeks forever slightly red, he chuckled from his rounded belly and his smile could warm a glacier into subsiding.
My grandma, on the other hand, never sat down. All my memories of her are her standing, most frequently in her tiny kitchen, a four foot space tucked between two short counters and a refrigerator. She wore the heaviest support hose I’ve ever seen and my memory of her is her serving up the coffee, making fresh cookies or her homemade waffles always seasoned with a touch of cardamon.
My grandma directed the flow of food and the conversation – she remembered to ask about my studies when I was in nursing school, or my interests and sports in High School. The funny thing about my grandpa, he didn’t remember my name or any specifics about me for a good ten years, he had a slow onset type of dementia, but he never forgot I was one of his grandkids and he had the best ones! It was enough for me, honestly.
Sitting around that table was where I first experienced dementia, watching my grandpa, and, honestly, around a table filled with family my grandpa’s memory loss didn’t much matter, it was just a small piece of a whole full life of people who loved each other. His memory lapses were easily covered by my grandma’s frequent questions or the passing of the waffle and cookie plate.
I think back on those years with wonder, I distinctly remember my cousin and I somehow made time many a Saturday morning during our socially busy college years to visit our 85 year old grandparents. Nobody told us to visit – it was the place to be in our family – next to two sweet grandparents who loved us and let us know it. It was a crowded table and for me, it will always be a one of my favorite tables that I’ve gathered at.
Another table that I gathered around was my parent’s house, the house I grew up in. I’ve sat at this table through-out elementary school into college, and even beyond introducing my hubby to my folks at this table and bringing many a friend here, as well. This table is worn deep with memories of people, of events, of food, of family, including the years encompassing my mom’s dementia.
Their table was a shiny maple table set in a spacious nook, surrounded by large windowpanes looking out on my folk’s glorious gardens that my grandfather, a landscape gardener, helped design and plant. He taught my dad, who taught my hubby, who taught me how to prune like an expert (fact – my family can prune!).
In these later years, for over a decade, my dad took care of my mom who was suffering memory loss, just like my grandma did for my grandpa – making the meals, cleaning up the table, keeping the conversation going when mom’s memory faded a bit. It, too, was a sweet table and sweet folk to visit. Dad might not be the best cook, but there was plenty of love served up at that table so that I didn’t notice the store bought cookies.
One of my favorite memories of that season was the year I babysat my grandson at my folks house while my daughter finished college. I babysat at their home because I live on an island 2 hours away. Clarky was an infant, sometimes fussy cause he’s no dummy and he knew his mama wasn’t there, so I’d end up carrying him about the large footprint of the house, walking him to soothe him and my mom, with fairly severe memory loss at that time, would trail behind me not quite sure what to do – ‘Is he cold?’ – ‘Is he hungry’ – she fretted over him.
She that took such beautiful care of my own children with my dad for over ten years while I worked as a nurse, was now not quite sure what to do. I must mention on those days they babysat I would arrive home after work to a full meal served up on my kitchen table (yeah, I was spoiled).
The picture I hold most dear from those babysitting days at their house is sitting around the kitchen table to eat lunch. Clarky was often in my mom’s lap with perhaps 5 to 6 small bowls of delectable tidbits to tempt his appetite – several choices of fruit, a veggie, cut up cheese, crackers, and always a small bit of cut up Costco chocolate muffins (my mom’s fav food!). A fact about our family – we love children! My mom taught me that, too. Those are sweet memories of being held and holding on to dear ones. We all need that – both sides of it.
The table we sat at changed after my mom fell and now I’ve witnessed a new and different beauty of care given at a lovely Adult Family Home the next best thing to your own home. It has offered gifts to our family, particularly my dad, whose 90 year old body needed a rest from waking up with mom two or more times a night, and the 24/7 care of mom, who even during daytimes required more and more orienting and directing. Here we sit at a highly polished white tulip table, always with tasteful seasonal décor at the table, often a bit of candy. I’ve been delighted at the attention to beauty given at this place, I know my mom notices as she herself has always brought beauty to all her spaces.
The small grief that has been hardest for me both with mom’s move and with her dementia has been not being able to call my mom daily. That was our habit, a daily call when she listened far more than she talked and she offered her wisdom. A caregiver who offered several hours of support to my dad during the season of caregiving at their home, sheepishly admitted to me once – ‘I have to tell you’, she said, ‘I ask your mom for advice, particularly about people. She gives great advice!’. I get it! I can’t tell you how many days I grieve for not being able to call my mom and talk. I miss that most.
I realize my sweetest memories of loved ones with memory loss have been seated around a table. I’ve witnessed the beauty of holding memory loss across a table, in community, in family.
Dementia holds both grief and grandeur for me. I can’t separate the two, because it is here at this table of memories lost that I’ve learned something of what love looks like, and it wasn’t what I’d probably expected. What I’ve watched is how love suffers alongside another – how it bears with another through it all, never giving up, never leaving the table.
Love has looked like the giving up of one’s life for another – giving up of energies, giving up of time, giving up of sleep, of hobbies, of having your own way in order to serve another whose way is a bit lost. It’s a beautiful thing, but not an easy thing.
They say – the books and those who know – that the last sense to leave a person is hearing. But, I believe there is one sense that outlasts them all – holds on until the very end – that of love. Like the ecosystem of the earth, there is life below and beyond what we perceive. It is there – under the ground of things seen like drooping heads and slumping bodies and legs that no longer hold the weight above them. There is a thread so strong, a grip so tight, a thing so real I can barely speak of it – that of love. The truth that lasts beyond a fleeting memory, to the truth that God holds onto us – God’s love holds us tight – and our love for each other grips us, too.
Love is never lost. Love lingers. Far beneath the surface of things. Love lasts. We hear much these days of the microplastics – the plastics that never go away. Love’s like that. Non-degradable. Lasting. It’s the stuff in life that stays with us the longest and it does a mighty work – a holy work in our hearts. Not to be underestimated. It is force above and beyond, like gravity, it exerts pressures. It creates glory and beauty in its path. God’s ways, God’s very heart, made manifest in the love we give and the love we receive, the smallest glimpse, a dim reflection, of God’s mighty love for us.
It’s this love, God’s very own that’s holds us and, I believe, God will use it to pull our stories and even, the broken and lost bits of us into His greater story. This is the Great Redemption Story.
This for me is one of my favorite pictures of God – the Great Gatherer. He picks up the pieces of us, the pieces we’ve lost, our very fragmented selves and He gathers them all up on that final day.
Don’t we all need to be re-membered and put back together just a little bit? He knows where all the pieces fit, He brings things that were missing, part of His ultimate plans for the whole of creation in us and in the world. He holds the perfect memory of us.
“Our core identity is secure in the memory of God” –
Henry Nouwen (Discernment)
I believe God doesn’t erase our history, He re-stories it, recreates it. That is my hope for memories lost.
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**From me to you – a prayer….
May your table be filled with the good stuff – the stuff of being surrounded by loved ones and family, surrounded by love, surrounded by one’s willing to care for you.
May He strengthen you to care for those in your midst. May God’s grace sustain you through your losses, the explainable ones and the unexplainable.
May the mystery of His grace be more real to you than the trials and losses that you face. May His face truly shine upon you and give you His peace.
I’ll end with one more prayer, because to me prayer is the way we make sense of the mysteries of life, attributed to St. Ignatius.
Take Lord, and receive, all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding, and my entire will,
all I have and call my own.
You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.
(Rom 8:35,38,39, Psalm 139:7-12, Deut. 30:3,4, Isaiah 54:7, Jer. 31:8-10)
“You have searched me, LORD, and You know me….You know my thoughts from afar…
If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there (in memory loss, in health woes, in all life’s distresses & troubles)
Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast…
Psalm 139:1,7-12
