Meditation Times with Elma

AN ODYSSEY THROUGH THE TROUBLED SEAS OF DEMENTIA A LOVE STORY

It had gone to episodes of sudden confusion and rage, triggered by nothing I could ever identify. Then paranoia, people upstairs in our home to be taken care of somehow. I told her: We’re in a new season. We’ve never been old before. We’ve got to learn to trust God in this time too.

The discharging nurse’s last greeting was: It’ll get worse... Keith, she said: Don’t be afraid. It’s going to be all right. She was unbelievably reassuring me. By then she had lost almost all of her abilities even to hold a fork or to scratch her own nose. She initiated her own blink signals: one for yes, two for kisses, three for I love you.

Dance? Oh yes, we still danced. Jitter-bug moves seated. If you were watching, probably pretty comic. It’s this period, three years of the Last Season, that began to hold a sweetness for us.