Grace Lessons from My (Aphasic) Mother

Mom, and my sister Leigh (her namesake),
celebrating the 76th birthday I missed.

My mother's birthday was the other day. She was born 76 years ago, but you would imagine from seeing her today that she was much older.

Mom has dementia in the form of aphasia. The hemispheres of her brain no longer communicate. This has left her mute, with a very brief attention span and a nasty case of short term memory loss.

She first noticed the aphasia, about a decade ago, when she decided that she wanted to work part time rather than to be solely retired. Mom had been a psychiatric nurse in a locked unit at a hospital in Beech Grove, Indiana, where she lived. There was an exam she was required to take, in order to qualify for a return to work (she had been retired for two years or so). The math portion completely confused her, simple math. My mother, with multiple advanced degrees, looked at it and could not begin to respond.

Doctors visits and multiple trips to a neurologist confirmed that she had aphasia.

Mom had always been spontaneous, and we often made light of her forgetfulness and a measure of everyday disorientation that caused us to think she was just a bit dotty. She also tended to walk through life, smiling and refusing to be burdened by sadness or disappointment. "I won't dwell on the past," she would say.

A corollary to not dwelling on the past (painfully true now, since she has so little memory), was always, "I don't have time to be bothered with guilt. I forgive, ask forgiveness, or just move on." This was true in her, and, strangely, it still seems to be a conscious practice of my mother's.

I took my family to visit her, last month, and - like the last time we saw her - she was so overjoyed to see me, her face flushed with joy, and she sighed over and over again. Words were impossible, but she made it seem as though words would not have been enough anyway. The four of us stood in the middle of the hall where we'd met, in a group hug that would not stop.

My own feelings of guilt, over the length of time since I'd last been to visit, were set aside, and I received a sense of grace such as I rarely remember encountering except in prayer or on a Sunday morning.

Mom and Gwen from April 2009

She could have rightfully and justifiably expressed her anger toward me over the lack of frequency of my visits. If she recognized in that moment how happy she was to see us after so long a time, surely it could also have occurred to her how angry it made her that we had been so long away. None of us - even Gwen - would have blamed her, I am certain, if she had shouted at us instead of embraced us. This much, at least, in my mother survives the aphasia she endures.

And this fairly brief entry almost serves to remind me that the guilt that prompted it would be, in my mother's opinion, unwarranted and useless.

Bless her!