Longing for Yesteryear

When was your yesteryear?

Was it several years ago, when your children were younger?  Was it a couple of decades ago, when you graduated college, or got married?  Was it half a century ago, when the world seemed to be a far simpler place?

My yesteryear was two months ago, back when my father's dementia was merely stressful.  My yesteryear is the beginning of November, when Dad could still recognize me as his eldest son.

Before he began accusing me of being evil.  Of being Satan.

My yesteryear is even before he began to believe I was going to kill him.

Starting on Thursday evening, and every night since then, Dad has prayed out loud to God for peace as he prepared for me to murder him.  Every evening, in what is called "sundowning" (the process in which dementia patients react in disturbing ways to nightfall), Dad now lives in profound fear.  Fear of Mom, fear of me, and fear of what he thinks we're going to do to him.

He shakes in agony, his voice cracks, he sobs without tears.  He whispers disbelief at how his life is about to be stolen from him.  He prays to God defiantly so I can hear that however I kill him, as he truly expects, I'll know I can't kill his spirit.

You don't see any of this on the Alzheimer websites.  You see lots of information about walking with Alzheimer patients through their earliest memories, but there's nothing about how to handle a loved one who believes you're about to murder them in cold blood.

My yesteryear is the time - about three weeks ago - before Mom began getting so afraid of Dad, and what he might do to himself and us, that she began calling 911.  She's called them three times now, and each time, the police come out and quietly try to diffuse our situation.  The first two times, it worked:  Dad calmed down and his fears subsided.  Saturday night, however, he began arguing with the cops, and I finally encouraged them to leave, since no progress was being made.

Yesterday afternoon, we experienced the earliest onset of Dad's sundowning, with the questions and fear beginning at about 5:00.  He'd scowl at Mom, asking for her identity.  He'd glare at me, disbelieving anything I told him.  I found one of his CDs of hymn music and played it, watching his face sink into his hands, as if in prayer.  Mom and I looked at each other, smiling to see him asking God for peace in the midst of his confusion.

Then he raised his head and looked defiantly at both of us.  He declared that he was ready for whatever harm we were about to inflict upon him.  We then realized he'd been praying for the faith and courage to face his imminent death.

Mom choked back tears.

I silently chided myself for being so gullible as to hope a simple thing like playing soothing music could intercept his worsening dementia.

My yesteryear was when Dad merely forgot that his sister no longer lives in Brooklyn, where they had grown up.  Every time they spoke on the phone, Dad would ask her three or four times where she lived, since the experiences she told him about her day had nothing to do with the old neighborhood.  Last night, for the first time, he angrily told her she was lying to him, and tried to hang up the phone.  Mom grabbed the receiver from him and commiserated with my aunt over what had just happened.  Dad had turned on his own sister, the last person alive who can relate to their family's childhood experiences.

My yesteryear was an almost unbelievable one or two inches ago, back around the beginning of November, when I couldn't wear several old, old pairs of denim jeans.  I fit comfortably into them now, thanks to all the weight I've suddenly lost.  Because of my constant anxiety, my appetite has shriveled up, and so has my waistline.  I'm still hungry, but I can barely brace myself for whatever new hell we're going to face each evening with Dad's condition.

My yesteryear was when Dad refused to go to church because he didn't want anybody to see that he needed to use a cane.  On Sunday mornings, after breakfast and before the time he and Mom usually left for their church, he'd feign an illness, such as being too tired or dizzy.  But then, as soon as I announced that Mom had left for church alone, suddenly he was chipper and professing that he felt fine.

My yesteryear was when Dad fought with Mom and me for trying to help him take a shower safely.  It could take half an hour to coax him into the bathroom to take a 5-minute shower.  And those strategically-placed handrails Mom paid some contractor a ridiculous amount of money to install in their bathroom?  He would disdainfully use them only after I'd repeatedly remind him of their obvious presence.

My yesteryear was back when Dad didn't fear me as his potential killer; he merely considered me the bad guy in our household; the person upon whom most of his anger was directed.  Mom and I had learned that because of the confusion and anxiety dementia patients experience, they tend to direct their resulting anger towards one of their caregivers.  Usually, that unfortunate target of their anger is their spouse.  Yet in our case, since I'm living at home with them, as the overweight, underemployed son, I caught most of Dad's vitriol.  And that was okay, since it usually spared Mom from even higher levels of stress.

But those days appear to be over, and long gone.  When sundowning begins, both Mom and I are equal-opportunity targets for his scorn, vitriol, and outright ugliness.  Some experts say we should nurture Dad's childhood memories and walk through his version of reality with him, validating his humanity despite his confusion.  Unfortunately for us, however, Dad's childhood was irreparably scarred by an alcoholic father.  There is little in his earliest memories that is good.  Years ago, during one of his extremely infrequent mentions of his father, Dad told us that the day he came home from work to find his father dead in their apartment's foyer, there was such profound relief in his family, it took a while before anybody figured they should call somebody to remove the body.

Fortunately for us, there's an elder at Mom and Dad's church who has willingly come over on each of these past few nights and helped to calm Dad down.  This elder, Ron, has a remarkable knack for chatting through topics to find nuggets of relevance that can engage the person with whom he's talking.  With Dad, his only really good childhood memories involve watching Dodgers baseball games at Ebbets Field, and Ron, having grown up as an improbable Dodgers fan himself, despite being raised in rural Texas, can talk to him about the old players.

In my yesteryear, Mom once had me research and print off some information on the old Dodgers and their legendary players, but Dad read just a couple of sentences of it and then filed it someplace.  We haven't seen it since.

Ron is an engineer.  He was also military pilot, and has worked in several different industries, so he's accrued a broad and diverse history from which he can draw stories and anecdotes that touch on Dad's history in the military and employment in the concrete construction business.  Meanwhile, the life histories Mom and I each have are inextricably tied into Dad's.  And since he doesn't know who we are, he doesn't trust us when we talk - especially about experiences it's apparent he should remember along with us.  Mom and I try to talk with Dad like Ron does, but invariably, Dad becomes suspicious, and before long, he's denying what we're saying, and getting agitated.  I suspect that Mom and I are too close to him, even though he can't remember why we're close.  People like Ron are removed from his life just far enough so that there's a certain casualness to their relationship.

Chalk it up to one of the difficult ironies of dementia.  Dad would cheerfully chat away with telemarketers and willingly offer up his credit card information if we let him.  Yet he's fearful of us.  He convinces himself I'm going to murder him, yet he'd shuffle out the front door, off to who knows where in the black of night, if we'd let him.  He enthusiastically welcomes Ron into his reality, but he bitterly accuses Mom and me of holding him hostage.

In my yesteryear, I wasn't a hostage-holder.  I wasn't Satan.  I wasn't about to murder my precious Dad.

I want my yesteryear back, and everything it stood for.

In God's holy providence, however, even today's misery will soon become a yesteryear for which I'll likely pine as we descend ever lower into this netherworld called Alzheimer's.
_____

Update - Sure enough; it's 4:09pm on Monday, and Mom and are getting ready to take Dad to the hospital, where his neurologist has arranged for him to be admitted before his inevitable placement into a nursing home.  As you might imagine, this is very hard.  Very.  Hard.

Bruised Reeds and Weak Wicks

Behold My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen, in whom My soul delights:
I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry aloud or lift up His voice, or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed He will not break,
and a faintly burning wick He will not quench;
He will faithfully bring forth justice.  - Isaiah 41:1-3 ESV

As God speaks through His prophet, Isaiah, regarding the promise and purposes of Christ, it's easier to focus on the grander things, and overlook the smaller.

At least, it's easier for me to focus on Christ's grand purposes, like bringing justice to the nations.  Pretty impressive, huh?  Meanwhile, I overlook the fact that God pointedly assures me that His holy Son will not run roughshod over the weak as He accomplishes His momentous, eternal objectives on Earth.

Of course, God's justice runs broad and deep.  It is the perfect accomplishment of His plans and designs for each one of us, where we live geographically, and when we live historically.  It's as perfect and strategic for you - no matter the country in which you're now accessing this article on the Internet - as it was for the Jews in Isaiah's day.

When we mortal humans accomplish big things, unfortunately, we tend to inflict a considerable amount of collateral damage along the way.  China, for example, has obliterated so many densely-populated neighborhoods in its desire to build the world's most ostentatious buildings, social scientists worry that indigenous cultural features from China's ancient traditions may be vanishing within a single generation.  That is potentially problematic in the long-term because civil stability in any country significantly depends on measured transitions of cultural touchstones.

As my pastor who preached from this text above pointed out in his sermon yesterday, we Americans were pushed into World War Two's Pacific Theater with the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor.  Yet our valiant fight for "freedom" was quietly compromised as over 100,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps during the war.  Quite the irony, wouldn't you say?

God, however, will accomplish His epic, universal, and even intimate purposes without destroying His people.  How could He act otherwise?  Pure, complete justice such as the sort God represents doesn't inflict collateral damage amongst those who serve Him.  This means that in terms of our deficiencies or problems, He will not discard disciples who have suffered injury, nor will he snuff out weak-spirited followers.

Isn't His an amazing depiction of sovereign care and grace in the midst of Isaiah 42's sweeping pronouncements about all Christ will accomplish?  Throughout such utterly profound feats as creating us, giving sight to the blind, freeing captives, and defending His glorious honor, God will preserve the lowly, and the damaged, and the weak.

God watches over bruised reeds and weak wicks.

Regular readers of my blog know those things that weaken me, and that have bruised me emotionally and mentally.  And even spiritually.  For years, I've felt like a faintly-burning wick, barely able to cast a glow, let alone a shadow.  My spirituality has been beset by doubts and fears, and it's easier for me to feel sorry for myself than be confident in my future.

Indeed, I tend to see myself more as a wick than a reed.  How about you?  A bruised reed sounds as though it's describing an otherwise innocent person who has been injured by somebody or something else.  On the other hand, a faintly-burning wick seems to more aptly describe somebody who simply feels as though their very being has been compromised by some debilitating deficit within themselves. 

I don't blame anybody for my depression, or for anything else that has affected me negatively.  Not that I'm a model of forgiveness, or champion of letting bygones be bygones.  I simply haven't been victimized any more than anybody else.

What I do believe, however, is that my chronic clinical depression has drained so much emotional, physical, and spiritual energy from me, that if I were to demonstrate the amount of fuel within my soul, and a wick were inserted to try and generate some sort of light or warmth from that fuel, the flame would be faint at best.

Yet Christ didn't come to punish me for having a faintly-burning wick.  He didn't come to snuff me out!  Amen?  He knows my weaknesses, and He's come to save me from them.  Not penalize me!

Of course, in order to benefit from this reality, I need to believe that Jesus - even the baby much of the world celebrates in some fashion at this time of the year - is indeed The Christ, the holy Son of the living God.  I need to let Him be the Lord of my life.  I need to allow His Holy Spirit to produce within me the Fruit of Godliness, which includes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  And I need to rest in His promises of deliverance - deliverance in His time and through His ways.  Not my timeframe, nor my expectations.

In our popular parlance, we use the word "break" in conjunction with ending something.  In the context of these verses, however, Isaiah is talking about "break" as in destroy, as if to regard the destruction of a ubiquitous reed as irrelevant.

And how many of us bother with a weak flame?  When you're evaluating the efficacy of a candle flame's illumination quality, what benefit is there in not snuffing out a flame that barely can emit any glow?  What good is a weak flame to us if we want light, heat, or even ambiance?

Providentially, God's value metrics are different from ours, aren't they?  And for that, shouldn't we be profoundly grateful?

Maybe you don't see yourself as a bruised reed, or a faintly-burning wick, and you're enthusiastic about celebrating all that our Christmas season has to offer.  You're full of vim and vigor, and really can't relate to what I'm writing about.  If this describes you, then be thankful for your lot in life, and invite the Lord to glorify Himself through the ways you celebrate His birth.

Nevertheless, meanwhile, if the Lord allows any of us to metaphorically encounter a bruised reed, let's be careful not to break it.  And if we encounter a faintly-burning wick during this candle-burning season, why not resist the urge to snuff it out?

When we're seeking to honor Christ, being mindful of others is simply following the pattern Isaiah told us He'd model.

Depression, Dementia, and Heavenly Relief

Dad used to be deeply concerned about my mental health.

After I was diagnosed with clinical depression in 1993, while I was living in New York City, he'd mail me letters of encouragement, with 3x5 cards on which he'd hand-written Bible verses pertaining to things like hope and endurance.

I've kept several of those 3x5 cards, along with one of his letters.  The letter is from August 1993, when he wrote that he believed I would be healed from my depression soon - with "soon" underlined.

Today, twenty one years later, I have yet to be healed from my depression - which has since been clarified as "chronic".  Not only have I not been healed, my Dad can no longer remember that I have it.  He doesn't remember attending therapy sessions with me, once he and my brother had driven up to New York to move me back to Texas.  Shucks, he doesn't remember that I used to live in Manhattan, let alone that he used to mail me letters of encouragement.  Some of the time, he can't remember who I am.

Yesterday afternoon, he thought I was the son of his childhood neighborhood's ice cream man from Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

A couple of years after I moved back to Texas, Dad retired, and I was going nowhere fast with my therapy for depression.  Nevertheless, with Dad's retirement, he and Mom began spending their summers in coastal Maine, away from the miserable heat here in Texas, and for days leading up to their departure, I'd become physically sick with separation anxiety.  I was supposed to be developing some semblance of maturity and personal responsibility by staying at my job, working, being somewhat independent, and coping on my own.  But it usually took most of the summer for me to calm down emotionally, and by that time, Mom and Dad had begun closing up the Maine house for the season in preparation for their return to Texas!

Dad no longer remembers Maine, or those cross-country trips, or the big riding lawnmower his former co-workers gave him as a retirement present.  The property in Maine had quite a large lawn, complete with a bucolic, bubbling brook running alongside of it, but Dad has forgotten all of that.

Instead, nearly every evening these days, he asks to telephone his mother.  He can't remember that she died in 1979, when she was in her 80's.  In fact, she died 35 years ago this evening.  When Mom and I tell him of her passing, he becomes upset, both because he's learning of his mother's death as if for the first time, but also because he senses he should know that she's dead.

He yells at Mom and me when we urge him to brush his teeth.  His dentist says he's developed an infection in his gums from neglecting his oral hygiene.  If we didn't urge him to brush his teeth, he'd completely forget to do it.  Now, Mom has him swish some Listerine in his mouth, and he complains of the stinging it causes, yet he refuses to admit that better oral hygiene would fix the problem.  He can no longer draw the correlation between clean teeth and pain-free gums.

The other night, he awoke in a wild stupor, vehemently insisting on getting dressed and starting his day.  Even though it was 12:15 in the morning.  As mom's voice rose in their bedroom while she confronted his irrationality, I woke up and went down the hall, walking into a bizarre tableau of his anger and accusations.  He yelled that we had kidnapped him and were holding him against his will.  When I began to pray out loud for the Lord to give us peace, he sneered at me.  Mom called my brother, who's now in Michigan; yet Dad, unable to recognize his other son's voice on the phone, accused him of being the mastermind of his abduction, and hung up on him.

Desperate, Mom asked Dad what it would take for him to calm down.  "Get me the police," Dad thundered.  So Mom called 911.  Before it was all over, we had two cops, two ambulance EMTs, and several firemen in the house - with all their professional regalia, beeping walkie-talkies, heavy boots, and the like.  And Dad was reveling in the attention, charming them with stories of Brooklyn, and showing them pictures he'd painted years ago.

He finally went to bed at 3:30 in the morning.  Didn't remember a bit of it when he got up several hours later.  Mom and I are still trying to recover.

Back in the late 1970's, Dad's mother produced similar outbursts and crises during her struggle with what was then called "hardening of the arteries."  Dad's sister would call us from Brooklyn, at her wit's end, hoping Dad could calm their mother down.  Today, Dad remembers none of that, even as he causes as much pain, despair, heartache, disruption, and anxiety as she did.

This won't end well.  That's part of what makes all of this so utterly sad.  Dementia has been called "the long good-bye," and it is indeed that.  It is long, and it is good-bye.  Its victims don't recover from it in this lifetime.  There is no antidote, no surgery, no treatment that can reverse it.  My grandmother ended up having a massive brain aneurysm while climbing a flight of stairs in her apartment building.  Their Brooklyn neighborhood then was so crime-ridden, it took almost half an hour before my aunt, frantically scanning a phone book in the days before 911, could find an ambulance company willing to enter it at night.  At least when Mom called the police early Monday morning, I could see emergency lights flashing through the curtains within moments.

Everybody says the same thing; Dad's neurologist, their primary-care doctor, the police and EMTs the other night:  there's not much we can do.  This is dementia.  This is elder care in the 21st Century.  It's not even like Dad is the worst case out there.

Still, it's so depressing.

We've known of Dad's dementia for seven years, and we suspected something was wrong for several years before that.  Our faith tells us that we need to trust in God, and find peace through the power of His Holy Spirit.  And yes, some days, it's easier to "be still, and know that God is God."  On many other days, however, the darkness, the morbidity, the irrationality and nonsensical nature of dementia... the despair can be overwhelming.

I used to hear about other families and their struggles in caring for loved ones with dementia.  But I didn't understand what they were going through.  I thought I had an understanding, but now that I'm in the thick of it myself, I realize that nothing else is like this.

Not that people who don't have loved ones with dementia are wrong for trying to help and sympathize with those who do.

Plus, plenty of other people are dealing with plenty of other afflictions at least as bad as dementia, if not worse.

But I'm not looking for sympathy anyway.  I'm looking for relief.  Okay; I admit it: I'm no super-spiritual saint.  I am disappointed that Dad never saw the healing of my depression.  I'm disappointed for him, but also for myself.  I often wonder if I'd be dealing with our current crisis better if my own problems with depression had been alleviated beforehand.

Then, this morning, for the first time in years, I reached for the little dusty bundle of 3x5 cards that have remained, paper-clipped together, in a cubbyhole of my roll-top desk, above my computer keyboard.  And in my Dad's handwriting, I see Psalm 40:1:

"I waited patiently and expectantly for the Lord, and He inclined to me and heard my cry."  With "inclined" and "heard" underlined.

This is another one of those things that's really all about depending on God, isn't it?  We can't make sense out of clinical depression, or of dementia.  Yet does God expect us to?  Or does He invite us to wait patiently for Him to eventually defer to us and receive our request?  In His timeframe; not ours?

In my narcissistic human mortality, I find little comfort in having to wait for God.  And I find zero comfort in my afflictions - afflictions which the Lord has allowed to begin with!  I dislike having anything imposed upon me.  And it sounds pretty haughty of God to say that He will "incline" to us.  So much of our hedonistic enculturation teaches us to make our own way, and solve our own problems.  Now!

Then again, of course, our culture doesn't recognize that God is God, and we are not.  We forget that we don't deserve any of the graces He bestows upon any of us.  Graces like having a mortal father who, when in his "rightful" mind, loved me, and desired to lead me in God's truth.  Graces like salvation, and unlimited opportunities to communicate with my Heavenly Father about issues like depression and dementia.

Life has seemed dark to me for a long time, and particularly recently.  Yet I still wait for the Lord.  In a way, there's not much else I can do, is there?  Many cynics would say that weak people like me simply need to hold on to something.  Desperate for peace, we hold on to God, or some other religious deity, or food, or money, or social status, or our job, or our family.

But I don't see myself holding on, as much as I believe God is the One holding on to me.

Perhaps some personality types deal with these issues with less anxiety and gloom than I tend to.  But I've tried for decades to change my personality, and nothing seems to have worked.  Maybe if I'd gone to seminary, or memorized every verse in the Bible, or gotten married, or... done something else morally and mortally possible that could have benefited me in various ways, including putting some cushion between myself and my problems...

But at some point, the rawness of awful things will impact us.  And we will need something we never could have conjured up for ourselves.  For example, even though he doesn't realize it, Dad needs me today, just like I needed him over twenty years ago.  Far more than this, however, we both need the Lord.

Have you ever considered the irony of Zechariah, Mary, and Joseph all being afraid when God's angels appeared to them in preparation for the nativity of the Christ child?  "Fear not!" each angel commanded them.

And what is my despair, but a fear of God not being as sovereign as He says He is?

Dear Lord, please help me not to fear, but to find relief in Your salvation!