Perhaps her path to becoming a saint
is this forgetting,
this stigmata –
not chosen, prayed for,
the fearful abstinence, alzheimer’s,
something holy.
She gives it up to God,
this her sweetest pride, her thinking,
until only one prayer is herself,
the rose in the center,
where before synapses turned
like a Chartres labyrinth.
And when the fierce catechism –
who am I? where and why?
oh why? — has ceased,
and the last of the words go,
some will say
poor old woman with dementia,
while others will seek her
as the new hermit
of our days
with beautiful broken wisdom.
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Beautiful, Maren. And so many I have known are here, inside your poem, while waiting to be set free to recover their spirits.
beautiful. who inspired this?
Linda – Colorado
It could have been my mother, but in fact it is more recently a parishioner. I cared for three people with alzheimer’s for fifteen years.