I stumbled across a beautiful poem by HT Wilson on a blog called “Words With No Names.” The poem is called Cancion.

This verse particularly touched me:

Looking straight ahead

she laments

“I don’t know what’s

worth remembering anymore.

I don’t know why I stored

any of these thoughts.”

* * *

It left me thinking -

What was it like when my mother knew she was losing her mind (and also aware that she was powerless to stop it)?

What was it like when it was so difficult to remember to put on the second sock (did it really matter?), but so easy to find herself huddled in a cornfield, singing songs to quiet her little brother, so her drunken father did not find them?

Some might live in the laughter of their youth – but she didn’t play those childhood games.

Could she have done something differently had she known this is where she would be? Would she have?

Could she have taken “possession of her dreams” a “thousand loves away?”

How she regretted decisions that changed our lives!

But did it really matter when the outcome was the same, regardless of the road taken?

Alzheimer’s is the thief of thieves…stealing our minds right from under our noses! (no wonder we couldn’t find them!)

Our minds are our tie to reality …  they are also our tie to unreality. When the mind is gone (and with it, all our memories), what do we have? Who are we then?

And is it not ironic, that if we get dementia or Alzheimer’s or any other form of senility, there is seemingly no escape … and yet the condition itself is an escape?

Is it so bad to live awhile longer in a memory of our choosing?

And if we are still able to reflect, will we say the past was “enough” – or will we say there was “enough” of the past.

Maybe the now is better.

* * *

Thank you, HT Wilson.