Words Less Spoken

A response to a friend’s post at The First Morning on caring for his mother with Alzheimer’s: 

David, I don’t believe people can truly understand until they’ve been there too. My grandmother has Alzheimer’s also, but she appears to be further progressed than your mom. She is a shell of a person. Aside from eating when spoon fed, she is not far from comatose most of the time. It is painful and has taken its toll on my entire family, especially my grandfather. In many ways I too consider her to have already died, but she hasn’t, so we grieve but not fully. It’s sort of the funeral that never ends.

When I think of how long Nancy Reagan cared for “Ronnie,” I am convinced that she deserves consideration for sainthood. My family’s situation is not yours. This is my grandmother, not my mom. Like others in my family I can try not to think about it. My grandfather is there everyday. We don’t have to be. It’s a selfish means of coping. I cannot know exactly what you’re going through, but I empathize no less. I will offer my prayers for you and your family as well, but, truthfully, we don’t know how to pray at times like these.

Watching my grandmother slip away, as well as watching hospice patients and parishoners go through the long process of dying, throws what is left of my faith into a tailspin. Why? How? What? When? Life may have its sanctity but where is its dignity? Even then Jesus gives voice to our brokenness “why have You forsaken me?”

Knowing nothing else to say, having nowhere else to turn, we go in the name of the forsaken one and pray simply, “Have mercy.”