My 93-year-old mom has lived with us for 11 years. Fiercely independent, she has always been more of a help to me than I to her, until the last year or so. She fell and fractured her neck in January, and hasn’t been quite the same since that last hospital stay. Her short-term memory has worsened, and every once in a while, she’ll experience confusion. She hasn’t been as attentive to self-care, and she has developed some strange habits. I just took it in stride as a part of a slow decline…until about 10 days ago, when she asked me who my mother was.
What followed was an afternoon-long attempt at reacquainting her with the daughter she didn’t remember having. The next day, she seemed more like herself, but in the following days, the loss has progressed to a more and more permanent state.
It’s hard to express how abandoned I feel. Anyone who has lost a parent can probably relate to this feeling of a loss of unconditional love. But losing my mother to dementia is more gut-wrenching than I ever could have imagined. Not only do I no longer have the one person who felt I could do no wrong, always worried about my well-being, would stand with me in any battle, and always offered a listening ear…. But she has been replaced by someone who doesn’t trust me and thinks I want to harm her.
Yet I am so thankful that God has fulfilled his promise to me. When I thought I was going to die of cancer 12 years ago, I pleaded with Him to not leave my mother alone, so that she wouldn’t have to suffer through burying her daughter. Even when every statistic was against me, His answer was so loud and clear in my heart, that I knew I would live. And here I am … to offer a love that seems unrequited.
So I am reminded of God’s love for us. Even when he suffered rejection unto death, he loved us. He was stripped to nothingness… and yet love remained. I suppose this is what he meant when he advised us to pick up our cross: that we would know Him by experiencing what it is like to love in the deepest and darkest places… making us keenly aware that just as love is His essence, it is our essence as well. It is the only thing that remains, and it is the only thing that lasts.
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3
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