Category: Spiritual Disciplines

Dementia and Sacramental Remembering

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I hear so many tender stories of people caring for a loved one who struggles with dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease.

A parent or grandparent.

A spouse.

A sibling.

A child.

A friend.

Every story is unique, but there are always common threads of sadness and sensitivity, heartbreak and hope.

Such stories remind me of my journey with my own father. Back in 2002, when Dad’s dementia was officially diagnosed, I remember sitting at the piano in our living room—a place I often go when I am confronted with realities that are difficult for me to process. I started playing seemingly random chords. A melody began to form. Then a phrase. “I’ll remember for you when you forget.”

That phrase became a chorus.

That chorus became a song.

That song became my truthful story, even a personal mission statement, in my relationship with Dad until his death in 2011:

I’ll remember for you when you forget
Your noble legacy demands nothing less
Don’t think me burdened by this sign of respect
It’s an honor to remember for you
When you forget

What does one do when a loved one is still here, but different; still with us, but in a way that demands a different kind of communication and attentiveness? What does one do in the gradual grief of surrendering a precious soul to the ravages of dementia?

In a word, one REMEMBERS.

We honor the ones who struggle, not only by blessing them with our attentive and sacrificial caregiving, but also by engaging in the beautiful work of remembering the parts of their story that they might be inclined to forget. We recall significant moments and memories. We recollect the journey and its revelations. We retell the sacred narrative of which his or her life is still a vital part. We remember.

When one experiences forgetfulness in dementia, remembering becomes a sacramental act, the bread and cup of which can be shared frequently and with deep reverence.

In this regard, caring for someone with dementia reminds me of what we call “church.” What is “church,” after all, but a community of chronically forgetful people helping one another to remember what they are most inclined to abandon in their spiritual dementia? What is “church” but a gathering of needy and distorted souls inspiring one another to recall what it means to live by the often countercultural Story of Jesus?

The church is a place of sacramental remembering, which means that the relationship between an attentive caregiver and a person with dementia is perhaps closer to the heart of “church” than either person realizes. In both settings, the rhythms of remembering are as natural as breathing and every bit as urgent.

I recorded the song I wrote for my dad and shared it with him while he was still able to make sense of it.

We wept together.

We prayed with desperate urgency.

We remembered.

Here is the song and its lyrics. May it fall gently upon your heart. And may it help you to remember.

When You Forget (words and music by Eric Park)

What makes a man a man? Is it his ability to remember things
Or is it more a man’s desire to do a thing in the first place
I’m thinking of a man whose memory fails him all too frequently
But I refuse to think that he’s less of a man than he used to be

The memory is just one portion of the person one becomes
And when it fails it doesn’t mean that one’s a failure
I’ll hold your memories as though they were a sacramental bread
And we will break that bread with reverence and frequency

And I’ll remember for you when you forget
Your noble legacy demands nothing less
Don’t think me burdened by this sign of respect
It’s an honor to remember for you when you forget

I see you in the back yard teaching both your sons how to throw a ball
I see you in the living room reading to your daughter
Your 50thanniversary looking at your wife like you did fifty years ago
I see you in a preacher’s robe teaching about the things of God

And I’ll remember for you when you forget
Your noble legacy demands nothing less
Don’t think me burdened by this sign of respect
It’s an honor to remember for you when you forget

With the pure water of your outpoured life
You have filled five hundred thousand cups
We have drawn from the wellspring of your decency
You’re who we want to be when we grow up

What makes a man a man? Is it his ability to remember things
Or is it more a man’s desire to do a thing in the first place
I’m thinking of a man whose memory fails him all too frequently
But I refuse to think that he’s less of a man than he used to be

And I’ll remember for you when you forget
Your noble legacy demands nothing less
Don’t think me burdened by this sign of respect
It’s an honor to remember for you when you forget

Journaling As a Spiritual Discipline

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I have practiced the spiritual discipline of journaling since my high school years. In my personal walk with Christ, journaling has proven to be one of my most reliable avenues into prayer, meditation upon biblical truth, and reflection upon the happenings of my life.

What is journaling? For me, it is the discipline of writing (or typing) about one’s activities, experiences, thoughts, feelings, and prayers for the purpose of deepening one’s discernment of how it is that God is redemptively and creatively at work in the seemingly ordinary circumstances of one’s daily living.

I have found many different blessings in the practice of journaling:

*Journaling helps me to become obedient to the biblical instruction to “examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5);

*It enables me to clarify my own thoughts and to distinguish between my true feelings and my split-second emotional reactions;

*It brings my hidden sins and ulterior motives to light;

*It helps to purge my potentially destructive emotional energy;

*It strengthens my discernment concerning the purposes of God and the way in which those purposes are fulfilled over time;

*It broadens my perspective on the grander narrative of which my life is a part;

*It enables me to discern the answering and outcomes of my prayers over time;

*It illuminates the evidence of sanctification in my own life;

*It helps me to listen to Scripture more attentively and to encounter it more meaningfully.

Franz Kafka, though not a Christian, articulated very well the urgency that he attached to discipline of journaling: “I won’t give up the diary again,” Kafka wrote. “I must hold on here. It is the only place I can.”

Likewise, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, one of my favorite writers, once captured in a single sentence the spiritual potential that he discerned in the practice of journaling: “This is not a pen. It is a prayer. One must have compassion for that.”

The other day, I flipped through the pages of a journal that I kept back in early high school (some 35 years ago). Reading the words written by that insecure, self-absorbed, yet earnestly prayerful fifteen-year-old boy brought to my heart a profound gratitude for the relentlessness of God’s grace and the profundity of God’s patience. The pages of that old journal also afforded to me a refreshing glimpse of a season of my life that remains a crucial part of who I am, though I am now far removed from that season chronologically.

That, I suppose, is why I journal in the first place. I journal because journaling helps me to understand how my past and present are inseparably linked in the timelessness of God’s redemptive providence. I journal because journaling deepens my attentiveness to the nuances of this human pilgrimage, no matter whether those nuances are to be found in a 2017 church meeting or a 1982 trigonometry class.

I journal, in other words, because journaling, under the transformational governance of the Holy Spirit, becomes a means of grace that hones my discernment concerning the passing of time, the connectedness of happenings, and the often-surprising intersection between the eternal and the everyday.