The Slow Good-bye

“Alzheimer’s Disease” is a term I’ve grown to dislike. What bothers me most about it is that word “disease”. That implies that this is an unnatural state, caused by outside influences, and can be cured by medical intervention. Is that true? I don’t know.

My mother has Alzheimer’s. In the last 10 years we’ve slowly been saying good-bye to her, as we see her slipping away a little more each time we visit her. Grief has become so much a part of my life that I almost don’t notice it anymore. Grieving as I remember what she was like when I was a young girl. Grieving as I remember her joy in her grandchildren. Grieving for the loss all of the conversations that we can no longer have. Grieving because we live 600 miles away and can’t visit her every day. Or week. Or month. Grieving because I know that one time very soon we’ll visit her and she won’t know who we are. And grieving because I may never be able to visit her again. This is the grief that has been part of my life for the last several years.

In the last few months she’s progressed (isn’t that a funny way of saying it?) to the point where she can no longer be taken care of at home and has been admitted to a nursing care facility. Saying good-bye is no longer one of the privileges we have: in some ways she’s already gone.

But then she isn’t. When we visited her last week she knew who we were, even though she couldn’t place names and faces together. She laughed with us when we told a story of what the cat did. She exclaimed at how tall her grandsons have gotten. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye when it was time for us to leave. She is still there, inside that increasingly aging body, inside the mind that can’t form words to communicate.

I know people worry about me, how I’m handling the fact that my mother is dying such a slow death. Wondering how I’m reacting to the fact that she’s dying the same way her mother did, and possibly the same way I will die. But I try to tell them I’m okay. I believe in the providence of God. What is happening to my mother is within His grasp. He is in control of it, and He is the one who brings good of every situation. Even this one. I trust Him with the past, present and future. All of it. No exceptions.

And I pray for grace to thank God for even this. And He gives that grace every day.