Past present

There are moments in life when the old and new come together; where what was and what is hold the same space for just a moment.

I have been helping a little bit with my Grandma who, at the grand old age of nearly 92, has had to have an operation on her eye. She can’t be left alone at night and needs copious drops during the day, so we have shared out the night and day shifts, to make sure that she has the care and support she needs.

When I was a non-sleeping baby, over 40 years ago, Grandma would come over once a week and walk the floors with me all night, to give my parents some sleep.  It's a special privilege to be able to return the favour on a smaller scale (at 92 she sleeps better than I did at 1, I’m pleased to say!). As I sit, tapping away on my laptop now, listening to her old clock ticking loudly as it has done for as long as I can remember in every house I remember her being in, there is a real sense of the old and new colliding.

The more hazy Grandma’s short to medium-term memory becomes, the more comfortable she is in the cosy blanket of her older memories. We shared Morning Prayer together the other day and there was no need to give her words; we decided to use the traditional format, as that was what she knew best, and she recited almost every prayer perfectly from memory. I am so glad that she has retained these precious words, full of history and tradition but charged with new life and freshness all at the same time.  And I will be forever grateful that Grandma has been such a good example of committed, prayerful life with God, just getting on quietly but with a sense of assurance that God is there, loves us and won’t let us go. 

When she was first diagnosed with Alzheimers a couple of years ago, it felt (and still does feel a bit) devastatingly unfair that my clever, well-read, crossword-loving Grandma was eventually going to struggle to keep doing those things which make her her.  However, I found Psalm 139: 13-16 really reassuring:

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

Whatever Grandma can or can’t remember, however much the past and the present collide in her and around her, sometimes confusing her and frustrating her sense of who she is, God knows exactly how she was made. He knows every facet of her personality, every little bit of her past, and will walk with her through her present and future. 

Tonight, I sat and watched as she dozed in the chair. Every so often she would smile to herself in her sleep. When I nudged her awake, she said that she had just been walking in the woods. No wonder she was smiling.  

Tonight, I realised the power of those words in Psalm 139 all over again. Still tucked away in there, regardless of her limited sight, mobility and memory, is the girl that walks through woods, reads and writes poetry, does the cryptic crossword and smiles as she does it all. And that is who God sees every time he looks at her - he sees who she really is. And, as he looks, I'm sure he smiles too.