Memories like Butterflies or Gnats

My memories usually come in one of two forms. Some are like butterflies - colorful, bright, and fluttering happily and busily through my mind. Then, of course there are the bothersome gnats - those recollections that cloud my vision, follow the scent of my past relentlessly, and have me dodging it erratically and willy-nilly as I walk down my path of memories. I love remembering the butterflies, but the brushes of their wings do not wipe off the gnats from the skin of my mind.

I received the butterfly memory shown above from a young cousin. The photo is one she found while sorting through a box in her closet, and is one her father had taken of our eldest son, Josh at about 2-1/2 years of age. Fuzzily pictured in the background is his Daddy, watching with that "Abba" kind of love that speaks of pride and joy. Josh is looking into the camera's eye, standing there in his pajama-blanket, a bit sleepy-eyed, his head crowned with taffy-like, curly blond hair. He's not exactly smiling, but certainly not frowning. He has the look of a boy with grown-up answers muddled with child-like questions. Josh, now 32, is our dreamer. He has always been thoughtful with his questions and answers, and filled with a multitude of observations of the world that surrounds him. I am constantly mystified by what he notices, but also by what he doesn't. He seemed then, and still, to see things and understand what others do not, while often missing the obvious. But then again, what is obvious to each person is different. And Josh was always and is still wonderfully different.

We are a family of singers. When our boys were young, we sang children's songs, or simple choruses, and sometimes a spiritual. We all loved music and enjoyed listening to and/or singing through the time spent on long drives to visit family. One of the songs we sang frequently was "Do Lord, oh do Lord, oh do remember me...look away beyond the blue." When Josh was about the same age as in the picture above, I was driving our boys over the southern part of Vermont from a small town in up-state New York where we lived at the time. We were on our way to New Hampshire to visit for a while with my parents. Matt was still a baby, and slept through most of the journey, snugly fastened into his car seat. There are several spectacular views of the Green Mountains of Vermont as you take the route we were driving, and at certain points you can see out over the range of mountains, towering over the valley below. It was a crystal-clear, cloudless day, and Josh and I were enjoying the scenery and adding our own musical soundtrack . As we rounded a curve, we saw before us a glorious scene, and our voices were immediately hushed. I pulled the car over and we stopped to gaze at the sunlit mountain vista, spread out like a gift just for us. Suddenly the quiet was interrupted as Josh gasped and then shouted, "Oh, LOOK Mommy! 'Way beyond the blue!'" I still cry remembering that moment, and it all comes rushing back to me as though it were occurring right now. I became intensely aware of Josh's profound understanding of what he was witnessing. What had been to us a song to pass the time was now something very real to him. He had been imagining the scene as we sang it countless times, and suddenly there it was in front of him, and he could not contain his awe and joy.

When my husband and I were married, he was 32 years old, and I a mere 24. Shortly after our wedding, we decided that we should probably start our family sooner, rather than later, because of his advanced age. As with most people, both my husband's and my perspective on what is old has changed in proportion to our ages. At that time, however, we were both a bit concerned that if we waited too long to start a family, he wouldn't be around to dance at their weddings! So just before our second anniversary, Josh was born, and 27 months later Matt joined us. Our third son, Adam, became a part of our family many years later. Our marriage has been immeasurably enriched by the presence of our sons. I'm glad we didn't delay our decision, no matter how silly our reasons might seem now. The beauty of the butterfly moments they created will always be with us.

Gnats have their season as well. They crop up in swarms sometimes, and while I work to erase them from my mind, the efforts are of no use, and for me that is probably best. Contrast has served me well, and continues to make the butterflies brighter and more vivid. I do not know when I became aware of how different I am from my mother in this respect, but as I grew it became increasingly apparent that she had the remarkable ability to forget the gnats. She kept no memory of anything "bad" in her life. Even when she recalled the death of her father, it had become a butterfly long before it was relegated to her memory bank. While still in her 20's, and shortly before my eldest brother was born, her father had a heart attack and collapsed before her eyes. She began to do whatever she could to keep him alive. While hastily doing some measure of CPR, she heard a voice clearly say, "Pearl, let him go... let him go." And so she did. At the same instant that she lost her beloved earthly father, she received the blessed assurance of the intimate presence of her heavenly Father, and was at peace. As long as she was able to remember anything, she remembered that moment with joy. The last ten years of her own life, however, saw almost all of her memories erased by Alzheimer's Disease. It is difficult for me to describe that time as anything but a slowly unfolding nightmare - a nightmare that took more than ten years to end, and one that still haunts me in its own fashion.

Alzheimer's takes its toll in stages, and is not content to exact that price from just one person, but also from all who love and care for those suffering from this cruel disease. The essential person is gone while the shell of a body remains to constantly remind you of who s/he was and is no longer. I am often plagued with great swarms of gnats from this time, yet there is also an exquisite butterfly that is able to scatter them. My mother was among the most joyful, joy-filled people I have ever known. She always seemed to have a smile on her face, or laughter in her eyes. Yet at the same time she was tender-hearted, concerned, active, and confidently prayerful for all in need. She was her mother's daughter, and the two of them - Mom and Grandma - personified joy. As a young girl of very different temperament, this quality of hers irritated me to no end. But as I matured I came to know how blessed I was to have her in my life, as were all who knew her.

As the Alzheimer's advanced, caring for her, and keeping her safe became more than we could handle on our own, and she entered a nursing home. One particular day I went into her room and found her crying, a sight that shocked me deeply. I had seen her cry only once before in my life with her. When my eldest brother telephoned her shortly before he shipped off to the war zone in Viet Nam, she softly wept as their bittersweet conversation ended, and she said good-bye. It did not take long for her tears to dry. She prayerfully yielded her sorrow to God, and soon exhibited her confidence that everything would be okay. When I saw her crying that afternoon at the nursing home, she looked up at me with fear in her eyes, something I had never seen in her, and said, "Paula, is everything going to be alright?" My own tears began to flow as I hugged her and said, "Of course it will, Mamma - everything is going to be fine." Her next question cut even deeper into my heart: "How do you know?" There came to me only one answer, and through my tears I blurted it out, "Because you told me so."

To a certain degree, I was positively influenced by my mother's attitude of joy, and her confidence that the ultimate outcome of living in constant hope and in the presence of a loving God would make everything “be okay.” I had an extremely happy childhood. Life for me took a sharp turn, however, and by the time I reached Jr. High School (a difficult time in most young teenagers' lives), any confidence in future happiness for me had disappeared. It so happens that the beginning of seventh grade also coincided with my family's move from Beaumont, TX to Westport, CT. Truly, there are not many places in this country that differ more than those two communities. While I had been teased most of my life to that point as being "big" or "ugly," (by the age of 14, I had rather ungracefully arrived at my full height of 5' 11-1/2”) all of that pales in comparison to the peer abuse that was heaped upon me day after day, as well as being the brunt of similar abuse from teachers and other adults. I went from being a happy, vocal, "out-loud" sort of girl with all A's in school to becoming a very soft-spoken and rather large timid mouse; a frightened and quiet girl who came to hate school and did only what was required to get by - mostly C's and D's, and except for music classes, I cared about almost nothing and no one – least of all myself. Because prior to those years I had been popular and well-liked, this all came as a shock to me, so I became almost entirely unwilling to stand up for anything I believed or thought, and would do or say almost anything in order to be accepted by the "in-crowd," in vain hopes of being liked or welcomed into their closed society. Rejected by most of my peers (except for a precious few who are still my best friends), I got through each school day by virtue of the genuine kindness of the music teacher. Without his wonderful acceptance of me as a human being, his sweet sense of humor, and manifold gifts as a teacher, I most likely would have committed suicide.

At home, my family was as supportive as they were able to be. One of my brothers, two years my senior, attended the same school one of the years I was there, before moving on to high school. He had the best sense of what was happening to me, but being a stranger as well, there was very little he could do to help. I felt as though my entire personality and my ability to interact with other people was dismantled piece by piece, and it was years before I was able to begin to put it all back together, though in a new form. I will say; however, that since that time I have come to believe that I would not trade that experience for anything in the world (nor would I wish to repeat it), because it created in me, with God's help, a sensitivity to the plight of others that I might have never been aware of, nor responded to. With patience, my mother helped me to accept, learn, and grow. She told me - through all the trials, hurts, and sadness - "Paula, let it go...everything will turn out just fine. Be patient, put your trust in God, and let go of your pain and fears - let God have it all. Everything will be OK. God will take care of you." Remembering well the lessons she taught, her plaintive question, "How do you know?" broke my heart. Besides having robbed her of the wonderful memories - the dazzling butterflies - of her life, it seemed Alzheimer's robbed her of her “blessed assurance.” But had it truly vanished? At the time, that is all I understood of what was happening to her mind and body.

On one of the last days I saw her, and the last time she was able to speak to me, I was sitting with her in the common room of the nursing home. She had that terrible, blank and empty look that is so typical of Alzheimer's - the look that says, "Nobody's home.” I was babbling on, telling her about what I was doing, how my husband and our boys were doing, and what was going on with our extended family. She was paying no attention to anything I was saying, indeed she had no attention to pay. So I ceased talking at her, and just sat with her, holding her hand. Completely unexpectedly, an expression – an instantly recognizable sign of thought - came across her face and was apparent in her eyes. I sat forward and said in wonderment, "Mamma, what are you thinking about?" As though she did not hear me, she turned her head away, and so I repeated the question. Very deliberately then, she turned her face toward me, looked directly into my eyes and said, "Love one another." Tears streamed down my face, yet as quickly as the certainty had come into her eyes, it was gone again. But I discovered that it was still there inside of her. God had spoken to me through my mother as surely as God had spoken to her on the day her father died. That butterfly came and has hovered near me ever since. Buried, deep inside of her by an awful disease, God still dwelt in her heart, and my Mom knew it. She understood it, and was holding fast to it, in the deepest recesses of her heart.. The words of Scripture spoken by so many in passing and that can be mere words on paper or recited by rote, she had truly grasped, ever since she came to know Jesus Christ. Just as Joshua understood the beauty around him, so too did my mother, and it dwelt within her still, "Love one another...love one another... love..."

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