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A moment of Profound Meaning

By Father Dennis Meinen
View from the scooter

In short, it was an ordeal that we sometimes wondered if we would survive.

An individual wrote to me that Ronald Reagan's decade-long struggle with Alzheimer's disease brought back memories of her own family's experience with this terrible illness. She watched in helpless sorrow as her mother-in-law, a brilliant, strong, gracious and self-sacrificing woman, and an elegant lady, slowly degenerated into an anxious, needy invalid who, in the end, could not remember her children's names.

As the disease invaded more of her mind, they stored the dining room table and installed a hospital bed in the center of the house. And they experienced first-hand the terrible toll that the disease takes on caretakers — first, the fear when she wandered into the neighborhood seeking a destination known only in her clouded memories, then the abbreviated nights when we awakened to her terrified screams as shadows horrified her stricken mind, and ultimately, debilitating back pain from the physical demands of helping her move.

Caring for this saintly woman in her diminished condition was a privilege...a frustrating, agonizing privilege. Did we do it perfectly? No! Did we sometimes reach the end of our patience? Yes! Do we wish we could have done better? Yes, without a doubt. In short, it was an ordeal that we sometimes wondered if we would survive.

But we knew we could not draw back from this duty that God had put before us. He had not called us to go to India, like Mother Theresa, to care for children and dying beggars picked up off the streets of Calcutta. For us, the call was to care for one woman whom disease had stripped of all her brilliance and dignity. It was a call to walk with our loved one through a living hell of agony. But it was a sacred privilege to see that, though Alzheimer's had robbed so much, there was a part of her that God protected from the ravages of that terrible disease. Her last words were "Jesus" and "love." In the midst of pain was the presence of the Living Word.

She said her final home going a scene that I (The daughter-in-law) will never forget — and it made all the previous months fade into insignificance. Surrounded by her family singing the hymns of praise and promise that comforted her — and us — she made the final trip across Jordan. It transformed her face from torment into a look of peace.

It was a moment, not of ease, nor of pleasure, but of profound meaning. And, very hard-won, indeed. For her, that time was a final struggle after a lifetime of service to her King; for us, a calling to minister in the everyday and mundane.
 
Do you have a story of walking the Alzheimer’s journey with someone who captured your heart? Can you share it in this column?

Rev. Dennis Meinen W. Meinen, 1701 W. 25th Street, Sioux City, Iowa 51103, taofdm1@hotmail.com