“There you are!”
Sunday, July 30th, 2006When I read this article in Reader’s Digest, I thought to myself, "Oh, my parents are not hopeless after all." Here’s an excerpt from the "The Last Chapter" by Elizabeth Livingston.
"Soon, my parents couldn’t remember the names of friends, then of their grandchildren. Finally, they didn’t remember that they had grandchildren.
These crises would have, at one time, set them at each other’s throats, but they now acted as a team, helping each other with searches, consoling each other with "Everyone does that" or "It’s nothing, you’re just tired." They found new roles - bolstering each other against the fear of loss.
…We tried to explain my father’s absence to my mother, but because of her memory, she could not keep it in her head why he had disappeared. She asked again and again where he was and again and agian we told her. And with each day, her anxiety grew.
When I finally brought him home, we opened the front door to see my mother sitting on the sofa. As he stepped in the room, she rose with a cry. I stayed back as he slowly walked towards her and she towards him. As they approached each other on legs rickety with age, her hands flattened over his face. "Oh there you are, " she said. "There you are."
I don’t doubt that if my mother and father had magically regained their old vigour, they’d be back fighting. But I now see something that came of all those shared day - days of sitting at the same table, waking to the same sun, working and raising children together.
Even the very fury they lavished on each other was a brick in this unseen creation - a structure that reveals itself increasingly as the world around them falls apart.
In the early morning, I once again heard the voices through the wall.
"Where are we?" my father asked.
"I don’t know," my mother replied softly.
How lucky they are, I thought, to have each other."
