Last year I had the opportunity to meet a woman who has Alzheimer’s. It ended up being a beautiful experience and I just felt it was worth sharing. While I don’t want to glorify the hardships of this disease, I find it amazing that difficult circumstances bring some of life’s best lessons. So here is a story about Alzheimer’s.
“I’m so glad that God has brought us together,” the old woman stooped before me says. Her brown eyes twinkle with a knowledge I haven’t yet understood. “We are both His daughters. And He has brought us together, even me, from the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” She laughs. “We are His daughters. He loves us. . . . . And I am so grateful for who you are.”
She sits down on the bed, and I sit in a chair a few feet away, our knees facing each other.
She asks my name, but promptly forgets it. It isn’t like a normal introduction because she doesn’t ask anything else, she doesn’t even bother to introduce herself.
“I am so grateful God has brought us together,” she says. “We are both His daughters. And He has brought us together, even me, from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And I’m so grateful for who you are, that you fulfill the assignment to visit me, so that we can be together, because we are His daughters.”
She knows I’ve come from church, though I didn’t say. And as she keeps repeating herself, I realize she must be the sister who has Alzheimer’s.
“We knew each other in the Spirit World,” she says. “I am so grateful that He sent people to us in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so we could know who we are, and so I could come here, and we can be together. . . . He has brought us together, and we are both His daughters. We are all His daughters and sons. Thank you for who you are and for your spirit and that you came to visit me.”
She smiles. “God has brought us together, and we are His daughters. He even brought me, from the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
I try to redirect the conversation. I interject questions.
She remembers little more. She came from Hawaii with her aunt and uncle. Her mother married a Portuguese man. She was a girl when she came to the mainland United States. She can’t remember exactly when, but she knows she wrote it down so she won’t forget. With each question she reverts to what she does know: God has brought us together, and we are both His daughters.
I let it wash over me. I listen, and while I listen I realize how much this simple testimony must mean to her. I imagine her when the Alzheimer’s started to set in, saying these phrases over and over again, so that she can repeat them to me, to everyone she meets.
“I am so grateful God has brought us together, even me, from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so we can know who we are. We are all his sons and daughters. He loves us. Thank-you for who you are, for coming to visit me.”
She doesn’t remember my name, but she is sure that we are both God’s daughters. And the power of that sinks into my heart, my spiritual self.
“God has brought us together, and we are His daughters, and He has brought us together, even me, from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He loves us, and I am grateful for who you are and that you visit me, because we are both His daughters. He has brought us together so that we know can who we are.”
I leave with a stronger conviction of who I am, taught to me by an old woman who by mortality’s standards cannot remember who she is, but who truly knows who she is.
And who we all are.
Thanks for reading. If you have a story about Alzheimer’s I’d love to hear it.