Monthly Archives: July 2026
Reflections on My Journey through Alzheimer’s
I am trying to write about and share my current journey with Alzheimer’s in the hope that it might help others.
Most people live mentally in the safety of the past or the freedom of the present moment. Often this limits recognition of the need to accept change, particularly the kind that comes with old age. When our bodies or minds betray us, we cling to our familiar surroundings as safe places because relocating is frightening.
But I personally have always focused on both the positive and negative possibilities of the future. When at 88 I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I knew from my mother’s fourteen-years with it that I might soon require caregivers. I don’t have enough money for a Nursing Home. After asking God to tell me when I needed to stop driving, I had two altercations with stationary objects. I took that as the answer that I needed to stop driving. Shortly afterward I started living every other three months with two of my children and their spouses, which gives each couple breaks and I help some with groceries. But this way the money I have won’t continue to be used up by rent and utilities if they ever need the help of paid caregivers. And at this point I’m only a mild challenge.
Many friends don’t recognize that I have Alzheimer’s because I’m only with them for short times and my age group is mostly a bit forgetful anyway. And I’m still aware enough to make lists and keep a calendar with me. Most of my forgetting involves words and names. Thanks to my computer and Google, I can still write, though it is much more tedious. Probably because of my mother’s Alzheimer’s, I recognized the beginning symptoms and had a Nuclear MRI that showed that there were areas of my brain not getting enough blood. I’m now 89, but my doctors say I am very healthy and may live a lot longer. So, I am getting infusion treatments that may slow down the losses. I go to Twelve Stones Infusion Centers in both Nashville and Memphis. These are some of the best hours in my old age life. The personnel are not only efficient and kind, but hilariously funny and fun. I look forward to this hour every two weeks. And they have uplifting scripture quotes all over the walls and offers for prayer either with or for you. And in the information handout they stress that all genders and combinations are equally welcome. Also to ask if help is needed for financing. Since I have four generations of gays and lesbians and one trans in my family that I know about. I see this as a plus.
I’m consider myself blessed to be one of the 30 % of those with Alzheimer’s who are aware of having it. I think that helps on both sides, mine and my family’s. But I also admit that I would never have made it this far in life without accepting the unconditional love of God fleshed out in Jesus. My mom didn’t know she was losing it mentally. She once said, “Am I doing something wrong? I can tell by your face that I’m upsetting you.” There have been a lot of hard challenges in my life and I was losing it in many ways in the early easier times before grace became a conscious part of my journey. But mom’s slow dying by inches for fourteen years tested my faith more than anything else. A few days after her funeral I was waiting in my car for a friend and mentally yelling at God in anguish, “WHY? WHY! WHY!” I wiped away tears and tried to get a grip by going into a small shop there. The first thing that jumped off a stand at me was a card with big letters in bright colors that said, “EARTH HAS NO SORROW THAT HEAVEN CANNOT HEAL!
Wonderfully, in my old age, I have become much more able to live in the present moment. And one of my best gifts is being able to laugh at myself, so now I get to laugh a lot more. A sense of humor is definitely a survival skill for old age. Playing a word form of Charades when I forget something can be fun with family.
Perhaps the biggest blessing is that in the past I have received grace to grow stronger and more loving most often through the hard times. So, I pray for grace to somehow make it through this at least being aware enough to be kind.
Please feel free to pray for that.
Richard Rohr on Mother Teresa’s Ministry
I do not believe that the lifestyle of the Missionaries of Charity answers all questions or that they are holier than many other Christians I have met. Yet there is a radical and utterly clear gift of God that is revealed through them. I even dared to ask one of the leaders about one of the most common criticisms of Mother Teresa: “Why did Mother not speak out against social injustice? Why did she not point out the evil systems and evil people that are chewing up the poor?”
The answer was calm, immediate, and firsthand. Mother Teresa felt that if she took sides, or played the firebrand, that she could not be what Jesus had told her to be—love to and for all. She said that if she started correcting and pointing out “sinners” she could no longer be an instrument of love and reconciliation for them. Like her patron Thérèse of Lisieux, “her vocation in the church was to be love.” She knew that her primary message had to be her life itself.
Memories of One Unfinished Much Loved Child of God
Chapter One
New Orleans, the French quarter, born in the heart of Dixie Land Music. Want to have “When the Saints Go Marching In” played as people leave my funeral. Shrimp Creole, French baguettes, and Eggs Benedict still on my favorites list.
Memories, when still in a crib around the age of three, looking out the window of the Pontalba Apartments on Jackson Square and seeing my parents walking away under the street lights. Feeling terrified, not knowing the doors between the next apartment were open so they could listen if I cried.
Early criminal instinct killed when Mom found a toy watch I stole from my friend’s house. The spanking wasn’t so bad but returning it along with my favorite doll did the trick.
Still remember the music and excitement of sitting on my dad’s shoulders catching beads thrown from the Mardi Gras floats.
Happy times sailing my sailboat on a long narrow pond. It always capsized before reaching the end. But I could not be consoled at five when we were moving to St. Louis on a train, so we sailed it out into the dark waters of Lake Pontchartrain. I didn’t care if it would make some other child happy when they found it.
But I have good memories of return trips to visit dad’s family and as an adult revisiting the Quarter including Pat O’Brien’s Bar and going to the large cathedral looking Catholic Church near Tulane that my grandfather built.
On one return trip as an adult, I was standing on Bourbon Street in the Quarter at night. This was some years after my conversion to a relationship with Jesus as the expression of God’s unconditional love, rather than a particular religion. I stood there enjoying watching very varied people and places. On the corner was a crowded bar open to the street with loud jazz flooding the area. Next to it were some transvestites in beautiful gowns on a balcony inviting people in for a show. In front of that building there was a preacher giving out religious tracts and urging people to repent. Next to him were some small black boys dancing for coins. On the opposite corner at a safe distance was a group of tourists sort of glued to each other for safety, suggesting maybe a group of Baptist Sunday school teachers in New Orleans for a convention. A steady mix of very varied people poured down the middle of the street. There were solid looking tourists in Bermuda shorts with cameras hanging around their necks, college students carrying Pat O‘Brien’s Hurricane glasses. and even a couple of priests coming through from St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square. I experienced a strong and wonderful sense of being part of God’s motley crew; all of us loved just as we were.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 