At
church, I sat behind the man who had been our family doctor until he retired in
2012. As we greeted each other, he said, “I didn’t recognize you at first.”
That should have been my clue to tell him my name, but I didn’t get a chance
before we started singing. After all, we had one family doctor and he had
hundreds of patients, so that didn’t surprise me too much.
It was
communion Sunday, and our associate pastor quoted the passage where Jesus said,
“Do this in remembrance of me.”
As we
returned to our seats after communion, doc turned around and said, “Are you
still Mrs. Fisher?”
“Yes,” I
said. “I remarried, but kept my name.”
“I
remember Jimmy,” he said. “Your name is Linda, right?” I nodded. “It’s a shame
that you both had to go through that.”
We
finished services with a benediction and our final song. As we were walking
out, he said, “You know, Jimmy won’t look the same when we get to heaven, but
we will know him.”
I could
feel tears welling in my eyes, and I said, “I know he will be whole again.”
When I
dream of Jim, he doesn’t have dementia. When I think of Jim, I want to remember
him as he was before dementia, and sometimes I do. Sometimes, I think of how
life changed so drastically when he began forgetting how to remember. He had a
phenomenal ability to recall memories, or to reminisce, as his brother Bob
called it.
It is
safe to say that I think of Jim every day. Sometimes, the thoughts are fleeting
and other times they hit me hard. I’ve lost other loved ones that I think of
often, but not that I think of on a daily basis.
This
morning, I was going to town and had some anxious thoughts about what the day
was going to bring. Then, a song came on the radio that immediately took me
back to a different time. The song I was hearing, “Cinderella,” made me think
of Jim, strumming his guitar, and singing the song to me. He would sing,
“Lindarella.” The remembrance made me both sad and happy.
Throughout
life, we find moments we’d just as soon forget, but those little snippets of
memory can enrich our lives if we let them. It is our past that makes us who we
are today. Who we are and what we do today will be tomorrow’s memories, so we
want to make them worthwhile.
Copyright
© November 2019 by L.S. Fisher
#ENDALZ
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