The funeral was taking place the next morning. It was a long day. As it went into the night I headed over to the house to prepare for the events of the following day. The phone calls had come at thirty minute intervals such was the anxiety about going to the funeral. The clothes had to be put out.‘ Can’t wear that – it doesn’t go with the trousers’. Another half-hour of fashion consultancy and eventually I could head home.
The next morning meant an earlier start so that I could to get to the funeral with my parents. Earlier shower, earlier breakfast, earlier prayers, and so on. Before departing I phoned to check in. ‘I’m coming down to bring you to the funeral’ to which the reply was, ‘what funeral?’ You get used to it I suppose!
Trying to join the dots between what went on the night before with the following morning is the issue. When you don’t try to join them there is no problem. How much of our lives are spent joining dots some of which can’t be joined, some of which won’t ever be joined and others that just demand too much if they are joined.
Sharing one’s life with people who have various forms of memory loss is very challenging because their simple momentary conception challenges our complex construction of what we think ought to be. We have to learn to give it away so we can enter the moment of beauty that another holds before us.
I look forward to eternity if I am fortunate enough to be welcomed into it. It is one large dementia space where there is no pressure to join the past or the future or any of our ‘complex constructions’ to the present because the present is all that there is in eternity.
Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish for. – Blessed John Henry Newman