An Alzheimer's poem

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED on Facebook, April 27, 2011

I just remembered this poem that I wrote 7 years ago about a dear family friend who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Re-read it just now, and I'm so glad I wrote it when I did...

Jeannette

Voice calmer than the lake at evening,

that horizon line, flat and true.

Eyes the same: clear pure blue.

You guide.

A mother of four—

five, when I needed one—

a force never forcing.

Empathy personified:

at funeral gatherings

your crockpot simmered;

for every occasion, a card in the mail—

your consummate cursive

conveying a sentiment and sharing news

in generous paragraphs.

One night at your summer home,

you and I looked out the black window

towards the invisible lake,

chairs rocking, telling stories and watching fireflies,

hundreds of them—tiny green lights here,

there, there, here, an inexhaustible supply

dancing to mate and satisfy,

unhurried. Patient.

My baby slept at my side;

brought to you as infants,

my children were always your pride.

As a baby, I lived with you and your family

while a divorce wracked my mother.

I’ve been enveloped in those arms ever since:

needed, not a by-product of conflict

but a person on my own, nurtured.

Now, as with my nana—

another angel of French descent,

barely five feet tall, haloed in lovely grey curls—

you are worried, fragmenting,

forgetting and upsetting.

I seek your gaze to find the real you

in that ever-knowing watercolor blue.

NBR 11/26/04