Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
March 13, 2016
Reflection delivered during God in the Now
A community worship for individuals and families affected by memory loss
Co-sponsored with the Alzheimer’s Association CT Chapter
And the Westport Center for Senior Activities
“I can’t remember.” These are some of the most unsettling words we can speak, perhaps the most frightening. They unmoor us, these words about forgetting. Who are we, after all, if not a collection of our memories, a collection of shared experience and human connections. I am: my children’s mother, my parents’ child, my sisters’ sibling, my husband’s wife. I am the person who graduated from this university, attended that graduate school; made those friends, care deeply about these issues. I know all this, because I remember the summer I traveled cross country with my parents and sisters, all five of us packed into one rental van; I remember playing Frisbee on the quad with the tall, handsome, kind-hearted man who would become my husband; I remember the day each of my children was born, and the night we all slept on the floor in our new house, because the furniture hadn’t arrived… I remember these moments, like snapshots in the storybook of my life.
So what happens when those details become fuzzy; when names dislodge from faces and places? Who am I, then? This is the most urgent, most vulnerable question we can ask, so very vulnerable, that most of the time we dare not ask it at all. We only think it, or whisper it into the dark as we lie awake at night. “Where will I go, God? Who will I be? What will others think of me, when I can no longer sustain the social banter that binds us together: ‘Of course, I remember. How could I forget?’”
Indeed, how could I forget?
It can feel like failure, somehow, this forgetting which is not our fault, not our doing. Failure, or betrayal: this forgetting which descends unbidden and robs us of one treasure after another, like pages torn from the storybook, or balloons escaped to float off into the sky, one after another. Or maybe I’m the one at risk of floating away, as the strings that tie me to the earth and to those I love unravel, one by one.
Who then, will keep me from disappearing completely? What possible hope can there be?
There is this: that the people who surround us – the families that love us, the communities of which we are a part – they are all keepers of memory. It turns out, remembering is a shared task. No one person ever does it alone. We tell each other the stories, again and again, to keep them alive. We fill in the details. We honor each moment –the integrity of each person. We say to one another, “This is who you are. You are clever, or creative, passionate or tender. You bake amazing cookies, tell the best jokes; people find your presence reassuring. I know it, because I was there, and I remember.”
Memory is a gift we offer each other, a promise that each of us will be remembered – and loved, as people with rich and detailed lives – even if and when we no longer recall those details ourselves.
There is also this: In the ancient, vivid words of the Psalmist (from Psalm 139):
“[I]t was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” (Psalm 139: 13, 15, 16).
God knows our storybook back to front and back again. God is the Holy Keeper of all our days, the One who gathers up and catalogues every moment, even when we cannot. It is God who turns each page with loving hands – marvels at each step we’ve taken, weeps with us and laughs. This is what it means that God’s steadfast love endures forever, God’s faithfulness to all generations. It means that God is in every moment, keeps hold of our past, our present and our future –binds the pieces together with love like a tether that will never fray.
Sisters and brothers, remember this. No. Trust this – in your heart, in your gut. For whether we remember it or not, it remains true: that we are God’s beloved, fearfully and wonderfully made. Each season of our lives is chronicled by God who walks with us the entire way. Someday, we may forget the details. Someday, each memory may fade. But we are not lost. We are never lost, for nothing is lost to God. We are known and named by the One who formed us and declared us precious. And if the strings that anchor us finally slip from our fingers, there is nowhere to go but into God’s gracious and wide-open arms.
Thanks be to God. Amen.