When Our Minds Fail, Jesus Will Not Lose Us
Twelve years old, I sat with my legs crossed on the pine floors of our living room visiting with my grandmother. As she left the room to go to the bathroom, I remember sighing and looking to my mom on the couch. “How many times do I have to tell her what grade I’m in or how old I’m going to be?”
“Be patient, Lara. She can’t help it,” she said. “Just answer her like it’s the first time she asked.”
I didn’t fully understand what was happening to my grandmother’s brain, though my mother told me it was Alzheimer’s Disease. They told me she might forget me.
Not me, I thought. She loves me. She babysat me when my mom went back to work after I was born. She brought me my favorite candy bar every time she visited. She told me funny stories and pretended to cry when I said I couldn’t eat any more of my food. She let me build forts in her living room with all the cushions I could find. Not me, I couldn’t be forgotten.
But eventually the day came when she did forget my name. As her grandchild, I would be one of the first people to leave her memory. The older memories stay longer than the newer ones. Some days, her eyes were bright and she could guess how old I was. Other days, I was Tamara, my cousin. And then some days when my mom asked, “Do you know who this is, Mama?” her hazel eyes grew dull as she stared at me and shook her head. “No, I—I can’t remember.”
My grandmother has since passed away, but I cling to the good memories I have of her. The memories of driving by the ocean to her house in the harbour, the days of making “soup” with food coloring in her decorative bowls, and of baking cupcakes, knowing I would only lick the icing off. But even more, I remind myself of climbing the green stairs to church alongside her and watching her read from her worn Bible with her glasses dipped down on her nose.
Alzheimer’s took much of her memory, and I’m sure it took much of what she knew about God. After her death, I wondered what that forgetting meant for her. What if she forgot the Bible stories?
Continue reading at Revive Our Hearts.
