Memory Lane

I have been on the road a lot lately. Nearly every week I have had to make the trek between The Capital of the Confederacy to that bastion of yankee aggressors known as New England. Each of these trips were because I have lost family. One family member was lost suddenly, shockingly, leaving me blinking in the autumn sun stunned at the finality and injustice of losing a good man when bad men remain. I asked God, "Help me understand..." (God knows I'm pissed off when I begin a statement this way.) "Help me understand why you took Gary but left behind George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, and the guy who cut me off on the highway?"

I didn't ask God this question in the shower, where I can blame running water for my not being able to hear his answer. I asked him straight out in the quiet of a cold October night while stars flickered at me like bic lighters at a rock concert. I clenched my jaw after I asked so that my chattering teeth wouldn't drown out the answer. I stood there, the Rogue Catholic that He knows so well, and I waited. It wasn't long before He answered. He reminded me of what I know. We are here for a purpose and we do not stay one second longer than necessary once that purpose is fulfilled. When we leave we return to where we came from and we take with us the people who love us. They are present for us in actuality, and we are present for them in memory while they continue on with their purpose.

"Certainly," I responded to God, "you could have found some sort of extra credit project to keep Gary here longer."
"Certainly," God replied. "but I was busy keeping you from getting killed on the highway when that moron cut you off so I didn't get around to assigning it." I suppose I could have chided God for His failure to multitask to my satisfaction, but to be honest, He has done an excellent job of creating and keeping the cosmos running. I also got a bit of personal satisfaction knowing that both God and I think the guy on the highway is a moron.

My other family member is being lost slowly; a little more of her is gone every day. I am the person she asked to care for her when she could no longer manage for herself. Now I find myself wrestling with quality of life questions, medical decisions, investment and money management issues and I fear that the business of caring for Aunt Agnes leaves me too weary to enjoy what time I have left with her. I stuggle to answer questions like, "When will I stop recognizing my grandchildren?" and "Is there a way to keep me safe without placing me under house arrest?" For Agnes, her mind is failing before her body does. She is losing her way down Memory Lane.

And I suppose that is the place where I have journeyed to the most in the last couple of months. If you are on the road with Irish, then you are traveling along Memory Lane. My aunt, tiny and wrinkled; a gnome of a woman, animatedly described how my hair fell in long banana curls when I was four. "You were a darling," Agnes tells me. "I wanted your mother to take you into the city to be a model. You were a little Shirley Temple." We wind our way up from The Big Apple, north to Connecticut through trees aflame with color. "On Fridays in the summer this highway would be bumper to bumper," she tells me. "Everyone left for the Berkshires or the Catskills."

We talk about girlie girl things. She recalls the emerald green satin dress she made for me when I got married in 1982. She does not remember that marriage was brief. But I can't blame her. I barely remember being married then either. She tells me that I have always had a lovely figure. It would seem that Alzheimer's Disease has also erased her memory of me as a chubby chick! She tells me you can never start too early managing fine lines and wrinkles. "I'm not going to forget you." she tells me with determination. Tears prick behind my eyelids. "Of course you won't," I tell her. "and more importantly, I will never forget you."