Forsake Me Not

She devoted the major part of 15 years caring for my dad. As he slipped into the silent world of dementia and then Alzheimer’s, Mom sat on his lap and spoon fed him. She sipped from their joint coffee cup, then shared some of the brew with the love of her life. Every day, every 36-hour day, she fed him, turned him, bathed him and asked God to heal him. Then her prayer concluded with one selah, “Oh, God. Please don’t let me get Alzheimer’s, too.”

After we buried Dad, she had about five years respite before her memory started slipping. We noticed it in segments – the same questions asked over and over, the loss of time and space, the forgetting of familiar faces. Incredibly, the same diagnosis hounded us. How could it be that both parents would be afflicted with this tragic disease? Was it because of the farm chemicals we used to ensure a harvest year after year? Was it nutrition – too many carbs and not enough fresh veggies? Or was it just the roll of the die and some part of God’s plan for the genetics of our family?

I’ve wondered if King David’s parents disappeared into the shadows. Psalm 27:10 records a sad lament from the sensitive heart of the giant-killer, “Although my father and my mother have forsaken me, yet the Lord will take me up (adopt me as his child).”

Forsaken, forgotten, cached back in time to some memory before the present. That is the scrapbook my mother now lives – the same book that my father lived. We children who swelled her belly and slithered from her womb are becoming the enemy. She doesn’t understand that we want to help her by taking away the car keys and the wallet and the trusting heart that opens the door to every stranger. She forgets when I call and throws away my notes, then tells the neighbors that I no longer care. She has forsaken me, just as my father did – though neither of them wanted to.

As I watch Mom disappear into this horrendous valley, my only comfort is that Jesus understands. He was forsaken, too, one horrible moment on the cross. His father God turned away from the sin that surrounded the beloved son; my sin, your sin, the world’s sin. Christ knew what it felt like to be rejected and forgotten – if only for a period of time. He understands how I feel at the gradual loss of my mother – this wretched forsaking.

The best part of Easter week is knowing that Christ will never forget who I am.