I was reading the obituaries the other day when I noticed a lovely dedication to Margaret who I learned had passed on. The dedication was from her granddaughter Sarah.
I don't usually read the obituaries. I don't read newspapers anymore. But there I was at the cafe and the newspaper was just lying there on the table. Soon I found myself absentmindedly turning the pages. I was turning the pages and this particular notice, Margaret's obituary notice, suddenly stood out. News of her death relevated itself from the pages. To borrow a term coined by David Bohm the message was relevated, the dedication somehow explicated itself from the implicate order of paper and ink. Hence today I am writing about Margaret.
Obituaries might seem morbid but really they are not. In stopping to reflect on someone's life for a moment, through pausing to honour someone's memory for just a short time perhaps we provide comfort to the souls of the dead. Cemeteries. Sacred places. Maybe you have wandered about in a cemetery and read the names and dates engraved on the tombstones. That’s it. They hear. That’s why graveyards have such a deep solemnity. Ghosts are there seeking comfort and understanding. I once thought of building a website to honour the dead. The idea was to build a site where people could post short biographies, obituaries and photos of their recently deceased loved ones. Visitors would be able to view the stream of lives, the river of souls that were flowing out of the Earth. They would be able to view the outbound streaming of souls that are constantly leaving our planet, the Earth. To balance these out flowings people would also be able register births. New arrivals would also be able to be registered with a little description of the setting that the newborn was coming into. Two great flowing streams. Two mighty rivers. Arrivals and departures. People would be able to come and view this wonderful procession, this procession of humanity and offer prayers. Prayers and wishes. One would be able to send condolences or post a comment of admiration, applauding a life well lived. Over time what an ark of goodwill this repository would become! It would be a powerful thing. Our connection with the dead would be strengthened. The dead would be comforted and the lives of the living would be enriched. It would be like sitting and watching people’s farewells in an international departures lounge. Anyway back to Margaret...
Margaret was a mother and a grandmother. Her beautiful daughter had a beautiful daughter. Sarah. Shortly after Sarah was born Margaret started to lose her memory and she became increasingly forgetful. Eventually the faults in Margaret's memory became so glaring that medical advice was sought and Margaret’s daughter’s suspicions were confirmed. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Margaret was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and her daughter was forced to take Margaret in and become her carer. Of course she would take her ailing mother in. The daughter took Margaret in and became her carer in their modest little house.
Margaret carried her Alzheimer's with dignity. She seemed to welcome it. You see Margaret was haunted by difficult memories so this slow forgetting represented a type of liberation. Many would no doubt think that to wish to forget something painful is an attempt to repress, is an attempt to escape, but this certainly wasn't the case with Margaret and her Alzheimer's. After having endured a shadow for so long Margaret considered her condition, her forgetting, an act of grace.
So Sarah, the granddaughter, grew up in this atmosphere of sacrifice and austerity. She watched her dutiful mother care for her ailing grandmother. Don’t get me wrong. Sarah also enjoyed a light and lovely childhood of abundant play filled with curiosity and growth. She missed nothing of the wonderful time of childhood. She missed none of it. There was nothing lacking there. All of the nutrients and caring were there in abundance. It was only that to this bright childhood a mood of sacrifice was added. The selfless devotion of Sarah’s mother was added. Such a thing might weigh on the development of a young mind. Such a thing could be a burden to the mind of a young child. In the beginning, in Sarah’s early years there was no indication of anything untoward. There was no evidence of any undesired consequences. Sarah had a charming disposition.
But in her adolescence, of course it was in her adolescence, Sarah started to exhibit a wayward inclination. Sarah’s behaviour started to become reckless. Was it indeed to do with the burden of her grandmother? Margaret’s daughter suspected as much. Yet whatever the cause, whatever the reason Sarah seemed to start losing her memory too. Sarah started to behave in ways that seemed to forget who she was. She didn’t care about anything. Nothing mattered. Each day was just another day to abandon everything. There was a strange affinity between Sarah and Margaret. Of course adolescence is not Alzheimer’s but strangely they do both start with the letter A! Troubled relationships began to circle around Sarah and the difficulty escalated until one day Sarah simply disappeared. No one knew where she had gone. She simply disappeared. The home was in ruin. Oh such chaos. Calamity. The house fell apart in Sarah’s absence.
In the midst of all this turmoil, in the middle of all this falling apart something strange started to happen. When Margaret's daughter fell asleep a mysterious force began cleaning and cooking so that by the time she awoke the house had been restored to order. The house was cleaned and restored. Their modest home was mysteriously returned to order while Margaret’s daughter slept and when she awoke it was to a feeling of patience and calm. Everything had been put right and an atmosphere of understanding, an ambience of patience had replaced the chaos. The daughter asked Margaret about it. She knew Margaret could no longer answer but she had liked to talk to Margaret anyway from time to time. The daughter asked Margaret and surprisingly Margaret did answer. Yes. She was the one responsible for cleaning the house. Yes. She saw that there was work to be done and she had simply done it. No. She did not know who her daughter was. No. She did not know her daughter’s name. But she liked her daughter, she felt strongly towards this woman who had been caring for her. Margaret knew nothing of her past. She just saw that there was work to do and had done it. From then on she could remember. Nothing from before. Just from then on. Her lost faculty of memory had returned. Months passed, perhaps six months, and Margaret and her daughter survived together and Margaret began to know her daughter for the second time.
Then one day Margaret’s daughter came home to find Margaret missing. Margaret had vanished and now the daughter felt that she was forgotten again, that she had again been forgotten. Forgotten by Sarah once and Margaret twice. She was all alone. For three days and nights the daughter was alone. The daughter was alone and wept in her alonedness. For three days and nights this went on. For three days this absence, this emptiness persisted until on the third night Margaret and Sarah returned. There was a knock at the door and the daughter opened it to find Margaret standing there. Here is your daughter. From one daughter to another. A circle of daughters. The bond of mothers and a circle of daughters. They held hands and knew that everything was going to be alright.
Have you ever experienced a moment in your life when after much trouble, when after a long period of hardship there is a new dawn? Have you ever known a time when after a period of difficulty a door is opened and you know that the storm has passed and that maybe you have even grown a little? What a blessed thing. Margaret had been given back the ability to remember. The ability to remember had been restored to Margaret and she had taken that gift and had given it on to her granddaughter Sarah, to Sarah who had forgotten who she was. How that came about, the story of those three days and the gift of Margaret's memory, well that is a tale all its own! Perhaps I should make an entry of it here someday too.
Having given away her restored memory Margaret soon fell back into her previous condition. She fell back into her Alzheimer’s, a little worse than before. Her face once again became blank and frozen. Her expression became blank and frozen but perhaps, just maybe her frozen expression was suggestive of an inner peace.
Reflection
Have you ever heard of the idea that life is to death as waking is to sleeping as remembering is to forgetting? These three dualities. Life and death, waking and sleeping, remembering and forgetting. These states are nested so that there is a hierarchy here. It points to a height of consciousness that is possible for us, a peak state that is attainable for us humans. It sounds obvious, maybe you find it obvious, but I find it such a thing. It speaks of a mystery these three levels, like Russian dolls, you keep opening them up and wow, inhaling. Oh to be alive, awake and remembering! How short this life is! And then you pack the dolls up again. Forgetting and sleeping and finally dying. Forgetting is healthy too. Just like sleep. Just like without sleep we couldn’t go on, we couldn’t go on without some forgetting. To remember everything all the time, no. We need a little forgetting. And we need to close the outer doll up again too. Eventually the outer doll has to be closed up as well, for a time. Before we play again.
I feel that there is something else in this story. There is something else that Margaret’s second life points to. It seems so courageous to me. She couldn’t remember her daughter or Sarah but we can see their connection, we understand why she is there. We can see what she can't see, the connection that she has forgotten. To return to life, to be born again in a such situation where you don’t understand what has befallen you, but there is a reason, it does make sense if only you could remember. It’s like fate. Margaret’s story helps me to understand the idea of fate. We are born into the world in circumstances that can seem difficult, the twists of fate. Perhaps we just can’t remember.