a footnote ...

                                      

   "You’ve never had my fried chicken,” my excited great-aunt Mary proclaimed.  “See you. Sunday. You’ll taste the best fried chicken in town!”

     Our phone conversation concluded.  Aunt Mary was wrong.  She did serve the best fried chicken in town.  However, she’d forgotten she’d hosted me the previous Sunday for her chicken dinner.  Little did I know as a seventeen year old, new to Salina, Kansas, alone working the summer before college for the State grain inspection department that Aunt Mary showed signs of Alzheimer’s or dementia beginning. 

     The disease progressed as my graduate years emerged from undergraduate work to cancer research at KU Med.  As I passed through Salina, I’d stop to visit Mary as often as I could.  Months often lapsed between my visits to her Senior Living Center.  Mary struggled to recognize me.  I could understand how she might not recall me because I was not part of her long term memory having only grown to know her that summer before entering college.  She lived in a simple grandma house with a postage stamp yard.  Widowed for many years, she always gave to me so generously with several Sunday meals.  Despite her disease, I was determined to communicate with her in some meaningful way even if she could not recognize me.

     I convinced a retiring KU professor to allow me to enroll in a graduate “Psychology of the Aging” class though I had completed no prerequisites for it nor did it have anything to do with my biochemistry research.   I enjoyed the class discovering, by far, the vast majority of seniors live productive, independent lives … but what about my Aunt Mary?  During one particular class pertaining to dementia, clinicians discussed various effective techniques such as music therapy, games, crafts, etc. used to steer clients away from episodes in which they described communicating through dreams or in silence with a dead spouse, friends, children, siblings, a foe or two and even God.  An “*” appeared referencing a footnote at the bottom of the page in our authoritative text.  Though quite common in this aging population, it was recommended that diversion using the techniques above be attempted for the benefit of the individual.  Whose benefit?  Mine, the therapist or Aunt Mary’s?  What if the experience commands more than a footnote, certainly not a diversion?

     I expected more on this topic as I flipped wildly through the remaining pages.  Nothing … simply a footnote … and this situation was the entire reason I enrolled in this class.  So consuming, I set out to discover what I could about these “imaginings.”  I found little until I stumbled upon an insignificant paperback addressing birth and its similarities to later life.  Inspired, I worked through the night deriving parallels in a theory.    Morning arrived quickly.  Soaked in a torrential rain, I dashed to my professor’s office, 7:30 am, and begged to address the footnote from days earlier.  “I only need 10 minutes.”

     “It’s my last day.  I have critical material to squeeze in.  Several students have questions.”  He looked kindly upon my drenched frame.  “You’re not even a credible psych student.  It isn’t going to happen.”

     Discouraged in the early hour, I listened to my professor cram two hours of final material.  With fifteen minutes remaining, he paused abruptly.  “Normally I’d entertain questions at this time, but one of your classmates has brought some interesting material to my attention and I think it worthy to see.”  Without salutation, he humbly turned the small auditorium over to me.  On a chalkboard on wheels, I sketched the large graph below which I had adapted from the book I’d come across about birth and life after.

     Our lives do not follow the clean lines or curves I’ve shown in this graph.  For example, there are young lives lost far too soon.  (In fact, all dimensions of my life follow the yellow squiggles, anything, but straight.)However, most folks do experience lives on some average as shown.  From conception to birth, an infant develops to leave the comfort of mother’s shelter to life in a new world unknown to the infant.  As Aunt Mary aged, her independence, invincibility, control, physical health (and many more 'youthful' characteristics) diminished.  While at the same time,  her spirituality, relationship to the Lord, communicating in a unique way expanded … and … in her new relationship it became more personal, more difficult for me to understand or to participate other than to observe and to listen, perhaps similar to Peter’s, James' and John’s reactions at the transfiguration.  “Rabbi, how good it is for us to be here!   Mk 9:5.  One must surrender “control” or invincibility to enter the new relationship.  On many occasions, staff would mention Mary displayed a certain peace after I’d visit … and all I did was listen and ask the occasional question to foster our conversation.  Mary’s experience and many like her may be more significant than a footnote!

      For anyone who has lost, I found this poem to be beautiful.  Its words encouraged me to write this reflection.

My Beloved   by Heather Heath Reed, … best read slowly.

He had come home to die

in his own bed,

surrounded by his books and flowers,

his sweetheart by his side.

It was always understood

that she would die first,

it was non-negotiable, she’d said,

subject closed.

                Now, he was asking her to let him go,

                and she felt cheated and afraid.

                Watching the night sky fill with stars,

                he become the consoler,

                his work nearly done, hers just beginning.

                Bit by bit, he helped her remember

                their lifetime together,

                spirited soulmates,

                raising kids and traveling the world

                mostly with laughter, always with love.

With one last breath, he slipped away

while she slept beside him.

Later, she would awaken

to the scent of yellow roses.