The Great Sycamore

May 3, 2011

Perhaps the best description I have seen of how it feels to watch a loved one fade into Alzheimer’s came from the pen of my son, Caleb:

My grandpa’s mind is like a tall sycamore.  His memories, once green, slowly fade into brittle brown leaves until they break free…never to be grasped again.  One by one his memories fade, and one by one they drift down.  All we can do is helplessly rake up his memories in a hope that, by some miracle, he will grasp them again.  This Thanksgiving, the question on everyone’s mind was how long?  How long till his branches lay bare of memories?  How long till winter?  It seems like every time we see him, something else has fallen from his branches.  After our Thanksgiving meal, he was standing awkwardly in the kitchen feeling useless.  When asked if he would like to help clear the table, he said with much gratitude, “Yes…I was just feeling so awkward standing here.”

What little he can hear and understand of conversation, he clings to, obsessing over that one leaf; so much so, that he can not grasp anything else.  Whenever we try to talk to him, he will either be obsessing over a topic, or feel bad because he cannot understand or remember what we were talking about.

Although my grandpa has Alzheimer’s, and will one day forget his family, although he may feel unintelligent and alone, he has a God who loves him and cares for him.  And even when all his leaves are gone, and he stands like a bare sycamore, a shell of what he once was, a wind will pick up his leaves and bear his soul up to Heaven.  All we could do this Thanksgiving was thank God for the privilege of standing in the shade of a great sycamore tree.

Caleb wrote these words around the time of Thanksgiving, 2010.  It is now the beginning of May 2011, and the sycamore stands bare.  He recalls almost nothing of his family, his career, his friends, his Lord, his life.  The man who taught himself Greek can no longer speak the English language in any intelligible form.  The hands that once re-fashioned rotten, worn pianos into beautiful instruments can no longer open a door or cut food into bite-sized portions.

This man, of all men, who so systematically built for himself a treasure-house of rich thoughts, this man is forced to watch those thoughts fade into the static noise of a mind-robbing disease.  This man who even to this day never stops fighting to keep his mind is forced to lose it anyway.

These are not things I would have chosen for him.  Yet, by the hand of a sovereign God, these things are upon my father and upon our family, and to the best of our ability, we accept that God is acting to will and to do of his good pleasure… and that his good pleasure is good.  Though I cannot guess the motives of our sovereign Lord’s prescription of such a disease for my father, I do see the potential for God, who works all things together for good to them that love Him and are called according to his purpose, to yet turn this debilitating, demeaning disease into a thing of beauty. 

I see my parents living out their vows until death do them part.  Is there not beauty in that?

 

I see a man who was good and faithful to his wife and children and who is now requited with respect though his usefulness in the eyes of the world is spent.  Is there not beauty in that?

I see a master potter doing as he wills with his clay?  Will not beauty proceed from the kiln?

Timothy, my mother’s brother, recently wrote the following note to my father:

The day you married my sister you offered to polish my shoes.  I didn’t accept your offer because I was shy, but it is a picture to me of your heart – actually Christ’s large heart in you.  You told us once you would give up all your rewards in heaven if only you would be allowed to put the crown upon Christ in that great day.  Doing it to the least is doing it to Christ, we are told – you have served us all so well for so long.  I would not be surprised to see all the pain here simply grooming you for your favorite part in the Coronation.

I am not sure how much of Timothy’s note my father understood, but to me it was a good reminder that God grooms for the grander plan. 

Sometimes I hear my father talk about great days yet to come in the resurrection.  His thoughts are jumbled and mostly unintelligible, but I can hear enough key words to know that even in the midst of winter, the great sycamore understands that summer is coming.