Sunday
morning I decided to make biscuits and gravy. I mixed up the biscuits and put
them in the oven and started making the
gravy. I melted some shortening and began to mix in the flour with a large
serving spoon. Soon the consistency was just right and I reached for the milk.
As I
lifted the spoon to get it out of the way, I noticed something odd—part of
the spoon was missing. Little slivers of plastic were strewn throughout the roux.
“Well,
I never had that happen before,” I said to my husband.
“Must
have been a cheap spoon,” he said.
The
timer for the biscuits dinged as I looked at the mess that never quite
made it to gravy and the spoon that would never be useful again.
As
often happens, my mind completely shifted gears. I thought of how easily a person could be forever changed
and as broken and ruined as that spoon. When you think of all the things that
can happen to break a body or a soul, it may be a miracle that so many of us
are still intact.
And I
couldn’t help but think of how a human brain can be forever changed by the
plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s disease, just like the slivers of plastic in
my pan only on a microscopic level. The debris in a human brain can interfere
with the ability to remember.
It is
hard to understand why a disease can
chip away at skills, abilities,
and talents learned over a lifetime. Memories vanish and leave only etchings
behind to frustrate and niggle at the corners of awareness causing a sense of loss. Jim often
said, “Right here, but I can’t find it.”
If the
debris in the skillet represents the person with Alzheimer’s, the spoon is the
caregiver. Pieces of life’s fabric are torn away, little by little. Day
to day, week to week, month to month, year after year, a caregiver goes through
a series of meltdowns as she adapts, regroups, and presses onward through
different stages of the disease.
I
dumped the mess into the trash, grabbed an oven mitt, and pulled the biscuits
from the oven. They looked and smelled wonderful. I quickly stirred up a batch
of gravy using the whisk I should have used in the first place.
The
entire breakfast saga reminded me that life goes on. Sometimes, we have to
re-set. If we put the past behind us and face each day with faith that
everything is going to be all right, we can move forward.
In the
end, breakfast was about as good as it gets. Ditto for life.
Copyright
© October 2020 by L.S. Fisher
http://earlyonset.blogspot.com
#ENDALZ
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