Wedding Day with Dementia
Story by Brianne Grebil
I tried to keep my hopes for mom small on my wedding day… Alzheimers has taken so much of what I knew as my mom away, I didn’t know what to expect. What I allowed myself to hope for was that she would be able to walk with me down the aisle along with my dad. That if she had any episodes of scared, inconsolable crying they would be brief.
That she would be able to stay at least through the ceremony. That the people she sees and the rest of us do not wouldn’t distract her too much. That she wouldn’t have any sort of accident that the mom I knew three years ago would be embarrassed about. I didn’t dare hope for more, or even hope for these things too hard you see, because Alzheimer’s meant that none of these things were guaranteed. I couldn’t tie my happiness to these hopes because I needed to have room in my heart to allow myself to still enjoy this day with my husband, even if life did not give me the day I wanted with my mom.
But life graciously did more for me on this day than to meet my hopes. It showed me the most powerful thing on offer in this life…
Mom did indeed end up having a good day. She was more “with it” than usual, she danced, she laughed, the few moments of fearful confusion were brief and soft, she stayed to the very end.
I doubt she understood what the day was about though. I don’t think she knew why I was wearing such a fancy dress (but she did say many times how beautiful it, and I, were). She probably didn’t know why we all gathered together, or who most of the people were. I assume she didn’t understand why she was walking arm in arm with me through a group of people standing around looking at us. I doubt she grasped the meaning of Brian and I standing in front of everyone. I’m pretty certain she didn’t know my name, or even understand that I was her daughter. Alzheimers has taken away much of her mind’s ability make or keep those kinds of connections and meanings.
But to be honest, that wasn’t a problem. None of that ended up mattering at all, because one thing I know fiercely, beyond all shadows of any doubts – is that she felt the powerful presence of love and it filled her up. Love coursed through her veins and pumped her heart and carried her. Life did not “bring her back” to be the woman I knew as Mom, but it amplified the part within her that is always alive and present to love. She now reminds me that love does not need labels or titles, it does not need things to look any certain sort of way. It does not rely on a memory or conditions to be felt.
Mom has shown me that by even holding on to the titles of mother and daughter I innocently made love conditional and fragile. Conditions make love fallible because life does not care about meeting us on our terms. Hurt will always find its way to us through the cracks of our conditions. But if you are willing to let go of the kind of love that you have made personal, you will be able to see the kind of love that lay beyond all ideas of what we think love should, could, or might be – into what love always powerfully just is. I have not seen or experienced anything in life more powerful than this, and not a thing in existence can take it away.
Part of my reason for sharing this is to help you see that far more is on offer in life than we often allow ourselves to believe. The most beautiful depths of life have been revealed to me through one of the worst things I could have imagined. It takes a courageous heart to let yourself even consider there may be beauty where it now seems there is only ugliness, I know. I can’t blame anyone for getting lost in the awfulness that appears at the surface. Just know that nothing in life requires us to see it in the way we see it now. We all have a limitless capacity to see more and life seems to have an unending desire to show us how.
