reuben

    By
    Milton Brasher-Cunningham
    -
    21
    2252

    My father-in-law is in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease. He and my mother-in-law left yesterday after an extended stay with us.

    Reuben

    Leah knew she was unloved
    until she held the boy,
    her firstborn,
    and she named him Reuben:
    “See, a son,” it means;
    a love carrier —
    “Because God has seen
    my misery.”

    The Reuben I know is a twin,
    next to last in family line
    a love carrier, too —
    the hardest working man,
    his blue eyes smiling
    like a sunrise.
    His labor, however, is not his legacy,
    but the brilliant light I saw
    in her eyes

    and so I asked to be family.
    He has loved me
    like a son,
    even when he didn’t understand
    why I was cooking
    or my earrings.
    His faith stands as tall
    as his shoulders;
    love as deep.

    He’s fading like an old photograph
    left in the sun too long
    I can still see him
    the spark in his eyes that once
    shone indelible now a dim
    blip from a beacon
    in an ocean of loneliness;
    we haven’t enough
    line to throw . . .

    Whatever happy endings are,
    they are not this.
    This is wrong.
    This is wrong. This is wrong.
    Being right about that
    changes nothing.
    When he sits and stares into air,
    looking for everything,
    my heart hurts.

    Reuben has lived a life of love.
    We, the Loved, are a living
    altar of humanity,
    called and collected to remember
    all he has forgotten,
    all he has given.
    I wish that felt like enough
    but it isn’t enough.
    It just isn’t.

    Peace,
    Milton

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    21 COMMENTS

    1. My brother also has Alzheimers.
      “This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. Being right about that changes nothing.”
      That’s so exactly how I feel. The waste, the unfairness, the reality.

    5. My father had Parkinsons. While he had his memories and his mind, he was completely aware as his body deteriorated with him inside. “This is wrong” says it all. So wrong.

      It’s on my list of “What was up with that?” for the big guy when I get there.

      P.S. I borrowed some of your links on Darfur and Hunger on a post I did tonight.

    7. The Dixie Chicks have a song about this, “Silent House,” on their new album, which I find quite poignant. One of them (I forget which) has a grandparent with this awful disease.

    12. My grandma, too, has Alzheimers… so much of this post resonates exactly with how I feel when I go to visit her. Thank you for sharing. Love, allie

    16. A heartbreakingly beautiful poem. I’m so sorry this happened to Reuben – he sounds like a great guy. I wish he could comprehend this lovely poem you wrote about him.

    18. Oh, this is lovely. There is so much love and desperation in it. My grandmother had an ending that was very much the same. This is the poem I wrote about it. (It’s very short, so I’ll post it)

      February

      My grandma never loved me more
      than the day she died.
      She was living in a requiem cloud and
      I wanted to pull her out.
      But she smiled and patted my hand and said
      “You remind me of my granddaughter.”

    20. Thank you for this poem; I read much of it with my mother in mind. Through her long battle with dementia; I hung on to a smile, or a silent gaze filled with love, trust, wonder, resignation and/or regret. It was heart and gut wrenching. I miss her every day.

      Bless you.

    21. I was a teenage boy dating his daughter…Big, Strong, an Example he was…bought Rachel these huge Valentine’s cards…Had a most communicative way of saying “RACHEL?!” when confronting a Rachel tantrum…the eye twinkle, voice tone, facial expression…something gave the correct combo of rebuke, admonition and love;
      Had a grace, dignity in is stride; humble, but confident in who he was and who his God was….made for a confident humility spiritually speaking…
      And you knew if you ever hurt his daughter he could make you know a type of pain you could only imagine; a piercing pain of conscience in hurting a daughter so completely loved by her father…
      A dependable worker but not a workaholic…happy where he was…
      When I think of Reuben I feel a gentle breeze pass through me….thinking of him with Alzheimer’s is not possible for me…I refuse to do it…He would want me to think of him as him; I feel the breeze

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