Chaplain's Corner

“Don’t forget me.”

It was 7:45 in the morning; I had come onto Blueberry Bay, the section of Bethesda Place where our residents with dementia live. Aganetha (not her real name) was sitting in her broad chair, looking kind of sad. I stooped down and greeted her, ”Good morning, how are you today.” She looked my way. “I saw your husband yesterday.”

“You did?”

“Yes, he said he had a wonderful visit with you.” She looked blankly into my eyes as if she didn’t believe me. “Yes, Harold (not his real name) was here yesterday morning and the two of you had a nice visit. You don’t remember?”

“No”

“Boy, this forgetting is hard isn’t it?”

“It sure is.”

“I have trouble with forgetting too. My wife tells me I would misplace my head if it weren’t connected to my body.” She smiles. “I’ll see you later this morning, it is chapel day and we can worship God together.”

“Will you come get me for that.”

“I promise.” I kissed her on the forehead and said goodbye.

As I walked away, she called after me, “Don’t forget me.” The way she said those words I got the distinct impression that she wasn’t talking about chapel later in the morning. She was imploring me not to forget her.

Being forgotten is a painful experience. I have a friend who recounts an experience of being forgotten when she was three years old. It was her birthday and her family forgot. At suppertime, after the meal was served and it was apparent that there would be no birthday cake, not present, no recognition at all, she stood up on her chair and sang “Happy Birthday” to herself. That experience has had a profound impact on her life.

When we forget another, the act speaks painful things into the others soul: “You don’t matter.” Or “You are not that important to me.” I work in a world where this reality eats away at the souls of folks every day; this one of the incredible tragedies that accompanies dementia. Another woman who lives on I care for is unable to remember the faithful visits of her husband. When I see her I’ll ask, “How is your husband.” “I don’t know.” She says with an edge of annoyance, “I haven’t seen him in ages.” Now I know his pattern, he comes faithfully, like clockwork, spend time walking with her, watching TV with her, speaking his love into her heart and while he is here, she is contented. But not long after he leaves, she cannot remember him being here.

Some families try to combat this forgetfulness by leaving a note book in the room and each family member and visitor faithful signs the book with the date and their name when they visit.  This is a useful practice for staff, it let’s them know that family is coming to visit regularly, but it fails to serve the forgetful one. On one occasion I was sitting with a woman and we were visiting. The subject of the family came up and she reported, “You know, no one ever comes to see me anymore.”

I didn’t know her well yet and I commiserated with her, “My, that must be hard not to have your family visit.” “You bet it is, it is like they stuck me in this place and then promptly forgot me.” I looked around the room and noticed a guest book on the night stand. “I see you have a guest book. May I look at it?” She handed me the book and when I opened it there were pages of dated names, family and friends that visited regularly. I commented on this and she responded with an edge of annoyance, “Yea, they must come in here when I’m out and sign that book and run off again, I know I haven’t seen any of them.”

Well, in reality, she did see them, she had nice visits with them and when they left she would walk them to the door and say “Good bye.” But because of the ravages of the dementing disease on her brain, she was unable to retain any memory of the visit five minutes later. I thanked her for showing me her book and said, “My how hard it must be to feel forgotten?” Her response, “You don’t know the half of it.”

Now there is nothing anyone can do to help these dear folks remember. It is of no use to try to convince them that they have forgotten, it is no use to try to convince them that the way they see things is flawed. Such strategies generally stir anger. In relating to folks that are no longer able to remember it is important that you simply live in the moment when you are with them; showing empathy for their feelings and if possible making your visits shorter and more frequent.

But let’s step away from this part of my world and work for a moment and ask ourselves the question. What about those we have chosen to forget; people that once were part of our lives that are no longer apart of our lives?  I have hundreds of these people in my life. There are those people from my childhood, from my college days, from my seminary experience and from the two churches that I served. People that I was intimately involved with at one time, but have not seen or even attempted to contact for years.

Well, most of these have also forgotten me and in the vast majority of these relationships, forgetting and being forgotten is just fine; no body is missing the relationship because life has moved on, the contexts of the relationships that we once had no longer exists so relationships gone by, become memories, while the importance of remembering each other becomes of no importance any longer.

But then there are those relationships that are supposed to mean something, but because of disappointment and pain in those relationships remembering is just too hard. I guess if we were absolutely accurate, these relationships are never really forgotten, for we live with the pain of their absences in our life all the time, yet we have lost hope of ever having those relationships in a meaningful, way that blesses all involved, so we chose to “forget”: to just live as if they didn’t exist.

Not being forgotten. It is a big deal. It is tragic when a dementing diseases lies at the root of a person’s inability to remember another, or at the root of their belief that everyone has forgotten them. Especially when the reality is that there are many who are remembering and demonstrating that in regular visits and heartfelt care. But it is equally tragic when those capable  of remembering decide not to remember, simply because the relationship that is supposed to bless, brings little more than more pain into one’s life when it is engaged.

“Don’t forget me.” These are haunting words, words that each of our souls whisper, more often than we may even be conscious of, because one of the deepest fears of the human soul, is the fear of being forgotten, the fear of no longer existing in the hearts and minds of the people that are supposed to care.