August 13, 2013

"A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever."

(Ecclesiastes 1:4)                                                     

Today is Mom's 79th birthday but she is no longer aware that today is her birthday or what a birthday is. Mom is no longer able to comprehend what age is. 

Alzheimer's Disease is a much hated disease; it robs the afflicted of everything. The accursed and dreaded disease also robs the rest of us of the person we once knew; wife to Dad, Mom to us, Grandma to our children, Aunt Carol to nieces and nephews and Carol to everyone else.

We cannot pick and choose the afflictions that come upon us but they come upon us nonetheless and we are compelled to live with them.

This may be one of the last photos taken of Mom and Dad together. As her mind and memory faded, Mom started calling Dad, her father.

December 25, 2009, Christmas Day. Kiera with her grate-grandmother. This was the last time that Mom was able to come out of the home and visit with us. I'm not sure if she ever understood that the baby she was holding was her great-granddaughter.

July 2012. Outside in the nursing home's garden patio.

A liitle more than a year later in 2011. Mom was interested in the "Little girl" but she did not seem to have any idea who Kimberly and Kiera were.

Once upon a time Mom was young too.

Compare this scene to the preceding one; 57 years later neither of us are young, but Mom really was not sure who I was.

Mom had parents too, a long time ago in Milan, Quebec. Mom with her parents and Ted.

"For all our days pass away under thy wrath, our years come to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away."

(Psalm 90:9-10)

We may wish that our lives could have turned out differently, but that was not the way life was intended to unfold. God gave us the absolute freedom to make our own decisions, and those choices we made have determined the routes we have travelled through life.  

Life is a gift from God.

The Oddblock Station Agent