At Abe’s Garden, minds fail, and sometimes bodies too. Abe’s Garden is a memory care facility here in Nashville. My mother wanders there now, hugging staff members, developing a reputation for being sweet though she doesn’t have many words these days. She cries sometimes. She likes to change her clothes too much and doesn’t always get all of them back on so they’ve locked the closet. Yesterday I watched her brush her hair in front of her bathroom mirror, she who was always so particular about it. It’s curly and unruly. It seemed to me she was at peace with her appearance, though it’s hard to say. She fought her hair mightily in the before times.

She doesn’t read any more. She still likes to water plants. She has a restlessness about her that I recognize. Another word for it is curiosity. She’s an adventurous spirit still, in some ways. And willful. She moves through Abe’s Garden looking like a half-mad mayor of the place. If she thinks about the past, she does not say.

She cries sometimes like a child when I leave. Such artlessness in the tears. I think: God, help me bear this. And help her.

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From Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, December 15, “The Deepest Self”:

Life batters and shapes us in all sorts of ways before it’s done but those original selves which we were born with and which I believe we continue in some measure to be, no matter what, are selves which still echo with the holiness of their origin. I believe that what Genesis suggests is that this original self, with the print of God’s thumb still upon it, is the most essential part of who we are and is buried deep in all of us as a source of wisdom and strength and healing which we can draw upon or, with our terrible freedom, not draw on as we choose. I think that among other things all real art comes from that deepest self —painting, writing, music, dance, all of it that in some way nourishes the spirit and enriches the understanding. I think that our truest prayers come from there too, the often unspoken, unbidden prayers that can rise out of the lives of unbelievers as well as believers whether they recognize them as prayers or not. And I think that from there also come our best dreams and our times of gladdest playing and taking it easy and all those moments when we find ourselves being better or stronger or braver or wiser than we are.

 

Canary and finches in the aviary at Abe’s Garden

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