Keeping Love Alive as Memories FadeSample

Forgotten

For Alex, the dreaded moment had finally arrived. The love of his life, his bride of nearly 50 years, looked at him with pleading eyes and asked, "Who are you?" For a few seconds, Alex could not breathe. As the meaning of her question sank into his heart, he did not even try to hold back the hot tears that sprang to his eyes. He struggled to grasp the unthinkable: Holly, the only woman he had ever loved, no longer remembered who he was.

Meredith and Macy, the couple's grown daughters, were equally devastated when it became clear that their mother no longer recognized them either. Each daughter felt that prior to Alzheimer's disease, Holly had truly been her lifelong best friend. Now the daughters grieved and marveled that the mother who had given birth to them, nourished them from her own body, and lovingly nurtured them to adulthood now considered them strangers.

Like Alex and his daughters, many people recall the day that their loved one forgot them as one of the most painful days of their lives. When dementia erases the identity of one person from the mind of another, the forgotten person may experience a flood of emotions. Even when they know that the disease, not their loved one, is responsible, they may still suddenly feel alone or abandoned, rejected, angry, grieved, or many other things.

Have you been forgotten by a person with dementia? Take comfort, child of God, in the absolute certainty that you can never be forgotten by your heavenly Father. The sovereign God of the universe is incapable of forgetting, and you, His precious child, are always in His sight. His promise to the people of ancient Jerusalem is ours as well. You are, as they were, tattooed onto the very palms of His hands. He will never take His eyes off you, and He will never forget you.