Jul 04 | Love what death can touch (Letters from the Coast)

The first time my mum decided to take a break from singing in Vancouver’s Christ Church Cathedral Choir, I didn’t think much of it. She had been a faithful servant in their music scene for thirty-five years. It didn’t seem unreasonable to step back for a bit.

And she did return for a while, and then stepped back again, and then returned.

It didn’t happen too many more times, but each time the stepping away was a little longer.

Her friends were confused. Some of them started to ask me questions. I was in the dark.

Finally, one day, I said to her, “Are you done with the choir?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and shrugged. “Maybe.”

“How come?”

“I’m finding it a bit stressful,” she said. “All that music…I can’t really keep it all straight anymore, and then I worry about what the others think. I don’t want them to have to put up with it.”

She laughed a little.

I just stared.

This was my mum. She had been juggling works like Handel’s Messiah, Vaughn Williams’ Mass in G Minor, and Tallis’s Spem in Alium (a forty-part Renaissance-era motet for eight choirs of five voices each) since before I was born. Since when did she find a few pieces she had sung over and over for years too difficult to manage?

Oh well, I thought. She’s an adult. These things happen as people age, I suppose.

But it wasn’t just that. The things she said about herself, about how she couldn’t keep it together, about how she was a “space cadet,” were coming more and more often. Some of the things she said, always accompanied by that awkward chuckle, were downright cruel.

My mother had always been a titanic figure for me. It was us against the world, and she was, to my eyes, unflappably confident and in control. But over time, I watched this fall away, and while she always seemed happy, she also seemed more anxious, and more forgetful. At first it seemed like any of my other older family members and friends, but it quickly became clear that it was a bit more serious than that.

After lots of convincing from her absolutely inimitable partner, she finally went to the doctor, and some time later invited my spouse and me over to tell us the news: She had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

It was June of 2018.

 

I couldn’t believe it.

I managed to hold it together, smiling and laughing and planning for the future, until we left. We walked home, and I did so in almost complete silence.

Finally, when I got home, I tried again to hold it together, but couldn’t. I ran to my bedroom, fell upon my bed, and didn’t cry but howled, like a wounded animal. I sobbed so hard that when I emerged to wash my face, I saw I had rings of tiny red dots around my eyes, like the heat rashes I used to get in the summer

What’s worse? I wondered. My dad literally dropping dead with no warning, or watching my mum, without whom I can’t possibly imagine a world, slowly become lost in a thicket of dementia?

There is no answer to such a question, although in some ways this seemed worse. My relationship with my father was complicated. I did not get to resolve it in a way that I wanted before he died, which was very difficult.

My relationship with my mother is imperfect…but, for me, quite uncomplicated.

I love my mum. She is my hero.

Believe it or not, things are, in some ways, much improved. Mum is no longer trying to hide her illness. She is still fairly independent. She and her friends have been traveling and having a ton of parties and visits.

We still giggle and shop for clothes and eat and drink wine.

I have still called her for support during times of uncertainty, just like I always have, to ask her opinion, and she has given it freely.

I remember in those first few horrendous hours thinking, “How can I possibly do this? I love her so much.”

And later, the beautiful, cruel, and utterly true realization: “You should feel blessed – your love will be what makes it possible.”

Love makes so much possible – but it never makes anything easy. That has never been a part of the promise.

But then I was introduced by my priest, Peter, to a quote from the 11th century poet Judah Halevi:

“‘Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch.”

And I remembered that that’s the whole point of a Christian life, for the ability to “love what death can touch” is the very nature of God.

Dear ones, with my whole heart, I pray:

Love what death can touch.

2 comments so far to “Love what death can touch (Letters from the Coast)”

  1. Elliott B Branch says:

    Thank you for sharing. My dad died suddenly as the result of an automobile accident; my mom after battling senile dementia for five years. It is indeed the life of a Christian to love what death can touch because we know that death is not the final answer.

    • clarity says:

      Wow, thank you so much for sharing your story. There’s a lot that’s familiar in it.
      So many blessings to you.

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