GUEST COMMENTARY: BY DR. HARRIS EVANS
NASSAU, Bahamas, October 10, 2022 — Wide Water…Most evenings she could be found sitting on the end of the sofa with an open Bible, embossed with huge font, made for easy reading. As the door opened, she would look up with a huge smile and place her finger in between the pages and closed the Holy Book. She seemed to smile with her whole face, eyes twinkling in the process.
This lady never failed to enquire about my day at work and how my family was doing. It was clear that she was raised properly and she excelled in exchanging pleasantries. And without fail, she would ask me the unusual question: “How is your mother?” To which I would reply: “She is well”.
Our conversation would continue for another few minutes and she would ask me again: “How is your mother, is she okay?”. It was moments like that when it was clear that there were several dynamics at work here: 1. She obviously did not remember that she had posed that same question to me, just minutes earlier. 2. There was no ability to store any recent events, even bits of conversation, in her memory.
One afternoon in particular, as I entered the door, her eyes lit up and she jumped up and joyfully greeted me and asked: “Teddy, where have you been and why did you stay away so long?” Before I could explain that I was not Teddy, she hushed my replies with how glad she was to have me back, as she said tearfully: “Since you left home in 1962”.
What was painfully clear was that much of her recent memory was eroding; after all, I was not Teddy and she could not recall that she was my mother. She was simply glad that her long lost brother was back home again, at least in her mind.
One evening that still stands out for me, she was curled up in the chair weeping, and as I enquired, she tearfully explained that teacher Smith beat her in class for talking and, between sobs, she explained that Melda lied on her, saying that she was one of the girls who were disrupting the class. For emphasis, she reached out her trembling hands to show me the welts on her palms and forearm. To her, they were very real; for me, there were only wrinkled time-worn hands from decades of hard work.
The only memory left in her fractured mind was her childhood days; therefore, I was just someone that she didn’t know. But then the way she clung to me seeking solace, perhaps I was her father Caleb, who was just coming home from work. What was a stark reality. That wide expanse of water that separated the present from the past was growing wider by the day.
The insidious claws of Alzheimer’s were robbing her of who she was, who she loved and everything that made her a person. In the last few months, she grew increasingly fearful, covering in dread from those around her, distrusting everything and everyone. She felt trapped and tried to run away a number of times; hers was a fearful existence, surrounded by strangers who would not let her go home.
What was unusual was that she has forgotten everything about who she was but her recall of Scripture was spot on and very accurate. One evening, I sat next to her and began saying a Bible verse: “This is a faithful saying”…then her eyes lit up and she said: “and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am Chief”.
Around this time, she had stopped conversations with those around her. In the final days of her life, she retreated into a place where she refused to eat, perhaps she was back to her infancy and was simply unable to feed herself or to chew. She had drifted too far from the shores of reality and the present and she perhaps was back in her mother’s womb. That was 20 years ago, but it still seems like yesterday every day that goes by…(c) Dr. Harris Evans, 10/10/2022, Creative Writers Inc. All Rights Reserved.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr, Harris Evans is Marketing Director at Bahamas Restoration Ministries International and Senior Pastor at Fellowship Word & Discipleship Center.
