A few years ago my sister Rosanne had the tough assignment of informing my aging mother that it was time for her to move out of her home into an assisted living facility. She was forgetting to turn off the stove. She was falling on occasion and sometimes wandering outside at night thinking she was searching for one of her children. Rosanne was more like a sister to my mother but as hard as it was to face the sad truth, the time had come. It was no longer safe for her to live alone.
That night my sister and my mom sat for two hours around the kitchen table weeping and discussing the move. My mother insisted it wasn’t necessary. She could still take care of herself! Finally, she conceded and mused, “Other people have done it, I guess I can too.” Her deeply embedded Christ-like spirit won out, and Rosanne was greatly relieved. She would come back the next morning and take her to the retirement facility. There were good people there. She would do just fine.
But the next day when Rosanne went to pick her up, my mother had completely forgotten about the conversation the night before and was not prepared at all. What followed was a heart-breaking confrontation. My mother uncharacteristically became angry when Rosanne insisted she had to go. “Someday someone will do this to you, and then you’ll see! You won’t like it!” Rosanne was absolutely crushed.
After a few months in the extended care facility, the overseers broke the news to us that my mother belonged in an Alzheimer’s unit. Her condition had declined rapidly. She was forgetting to take her medicine. She couldn’t find her own room. She had wandered out at night by herself causing a near-panic. She needed to be in a lock-down unit. We were so sad!
One day just after mom turned ninety I went to visit since I hadn’t seen her for some time. Though her face lit up when she saw me, she thought I was her brother. We sat quietly for extended periods, and I found myself searching for things to say, struggling to strike up a conversation. She didn’t even recognize my dad’s picture. She did a little better when we discussed events 75- 80 years ago when she was a child. The mind is a strange thing.
I thought about the times as a preschooler when I was bored and begged her to tell me a story. She must have struggled to entertain me, but she would often tell me Bible stories. I can still recall her vivid description of Peter fearing the storm, followed by a personal application, “You don’t need to ever be afraid because Jesus is with you too!” But now I was struggling to make even a surface conversation with her, and she was somewhat apprehensive.
Finally, I said, “Mom, before I leave I want to read the Bible to you. Where’s your Bible?” She couldn’t find her Bible, and I finally said, ”I’ll tell you what…I’ll just quote the 23rd Psalm to you.” As I started quoting, her eyes lit up, and she began to quote it almost verbatim with me. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Thou art with me…surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Suddenly my mother’s face was aglow, and I could tell she was pleased that she had recalled a good portion of the Psalm. It’s wonderful how God’s Word remains, even when almost everything else passes away. I tried hard not to get choked up. But when we prayed together, my voice got raspy, and my prayer was brief. That day as I walked out of the extended care facility my wife put her arm in mine as we trudged silently to the car. She understood. Alzheimer’s is death by degrees.
The last time I visited my mother was shortly before she died. She showed no signs of remembering me or anything else for that matter. Even the 23rd Psalm didn’t move her. She just sat and stared at the wall. My brother John was visiting with me on this occasion, and before we left he said, “Mom, remember your favorite song, ‘There is a Fountain?’ Let’s sing that together.” He began singing, and I joined him, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins…”
Someone described music as “the language of the heart.” There is something about music that digs its roots deep into the soul. And that bleak afternoon as we sang, my mother’s face brightened a little, and she began to mouth the words and tried to sing. “…And sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.” At that point, I was too choked up to sing any more.
I left that day with mixed emotions. Sad that she wasn’t the intelligent, loving, vibrant personality I once knew. But thankful for the hope of heaven, when Christ is going to make all things new. I’m so thankful that I’ve been blessed with a Christian mother who knew the Lord and had His Word and His music so deeply etched in her memory that it never passed away. I still miss her, but I’m most thankful that there’s coming a day when He will restore all things and wipe away every tear from our eye and “we shall know even as we are known.”
PRAYER: “Heavenly Father, thanks for mothers who have borne us, nursed us, bathed us, loved us, taught us, worried over us, rejoiced with us, wept with us and then released us. Would you bless each of our mothers today and help us, husbands and children, to be more understanding and supportive of the difficult challenges they face? And, Lord, please look after the ones who can no longer take care of themselves and say hello for us to those of our mothers who are already with you. Amen.”
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