As a committed Christian who was very involved in her church, my mom began writing down thoughts about religion, about life, and about happiness during the early 1950s, eventually compiling them in a small binder that she gave to me in the mid 1990s.  I have compiled a few of these here. Others are interspersed among the photos in her Gallery.

Thoughts Along The Way 
Bits and Pieces - a Journey of Faith
by Eleanore Larson
 
I am secure in the knowledge that God's love enfolds me and surrounds me

Never let what you don't have interfere with your enjoyment of what you do have 

 Let not your life be measured in the number of its days or years, 
But only in the pleasure it has brought to those who have come in contact with it

Lord: You have given us the bricks of life. Now provide us also with the mortar so that we can build well and so that our construction will be strong, stable, and lasting

Happiness depends on your ability to find delight in small things...

I think everyone must find God for himself - in his own time, in his own way.
You will find God when you sincerely want to find him.
He is always there, ready to reveal Himself and His love for you - if you will but seek.

We are limited beings - limited by time, space, and our own abilities, or lack of them
Only death can free us entirely
Then, Time is overcome by Eternity
Our physical beings overcome by our spiritual selves...
We shall be exactly as God wants us to be - perfect in His image.

Father Time wishes to lay the mantle of Old Age across my shoulders...
But I am content to linger a while longer in the shade of my middle years...

Prayer is the avenue that leads to the heart of God...

God gives us the breath of life, and some talents.  The rest is up to us... what we become in life and what we do with those talents... 

To have Joy, Optimism, and Confidence in the Knowledge of God
is to find Happiness...

A person is what he has lived and what he has learned.
And as he learns, he begins to understand himself.
And as he understands himself, he can begin to understand others...

Death does not obliterate a person.
Simply because a person dies does not mean they cease to exist.
They continue to exist - but in a different world....
a different way...
a more glorious way...
In the presence of God their spirit lives on!

Would that I could compose a song of adoration and love to Thee
Would that words would fly from my lips followed by sweet melody...
Would that You could hear this song
that wold fill my heart all the day long...
Ah, but these things never could be --
Yet, wait, what is this I sing to Thee?


 

July 16 2012
Today is mom’s 88th birthday. Stopped by to see her this afternoon at the dementia nursing home, but she was napping pretty heartily.  Came back at dinner time and she was awake but still pretty groggy and had her eyes closed most of the time.  Seeing what she’s able to eat now – a plastic plate with three compartments of pureed something or other – was exceedingly depressing, especially knowing how much she loved to cook incredible meals and eat at fine restaurants and the many times we went out to do so before the dementia and the broken hip confined her to confusion and care homes. The other residents in the nursing home, some of whom were on the same diet as mom, others who had regular cafeteria style meals, were all eating in that slow motion way that elderly people with dementia and Alzheimers do.  It grieves me to see my mom and these other people who were once so lively and sharp and enjoyed life so very much, rendered so listless and unable to understand or recognize the reality around them. It’s kind of a living death – the body is still here, healthy or sort of healthy; but the mind has submerged itself into a sea of confusion and memories that no longer fit together in the right way.  I left the birthday cards mom received from friends in her room, along with the portrait of her and my dad that I’d found in storage, knowing she wouldn’t understand what they were or what they meant or who was in the photo.  I’ll try another day to show them to her when she’s a little more alert.  She seems content, but I miss being able to talk to her about stuff and, especially, being able to take her out to those fine meals that she loved so much.
- Randall 

The Unremembered Road

I am missing my mother today.  She's still here, but this frail, confused shell of a person, with so little awareness of what or where or when, is so unlike the enthusiastic, lively woman of my youth and middle age, that she is a virtual stranger, save for a glimpse of the impish smile; the unexpected moment of awareness rising momentarily out of the mixture of jumbled memories; the warm comfort of her touch, or mine.  She is aided by fine, sympathetic professional caretakers, yet they don't know her well enough to see past her infirmary and recognize the once-was within her.  Dementia is a cruel, narrow road down which the afflicted one wanders aimlessly, each turn opening up a brand new world which, by the time the next turn is met, has passed irrevocably away.

- Randall D Larson 10/01/2010

The Unremembered Road, Part 2

Stopped by to see mom today. She was in very good spirits.  When I got there she was talking to two of the long-time aides in the main sitting room, having a friendly conversation about something that clearly made no sense to anyone but her.  But she was enjoying herself, and smiling.  She introduced me to her two “new” friends.  “This is my friend Harry,” she pointed to the young man, whose name was not Harry, then turned to the young lady.  “And this is di-ribbity-ribbity-do,” she said matter-of-factly.  I still do not recall the young lady’s real name although I knew it wasn’t “di-ribbity-ribbity-do,” but I played along.  “I know, I’ve met them before,” I said to my mom, winking over at the young lady whose name wasn’t really “di-ribbity-ribbity-do.”  She grinned back.  My mom smiled and asked if we could go for a walk out into the garden.  I said we’d go for a roll.

Resting my hands firmly on the grips of her wheelchair, I pushed her out into the backyard, where a cement walkway passed through an aisle of plants, small fountains, a few hanging garden ornaments, and some potted flowers on either side.  Each time we took this stroll the garden was brand new to her, and she – a lifelong gardener whose green thumbs had made magical gardens out of our yards as far back as I can remember – marveled at the shrubs and plants we passed, seeing each for the first time.

Back inside the care home we took the hallway loop that passed the resident apartments.  There were about a dozen of them circling around a central core that houses the laundry, rest room, aides’ office, etc.  Mom’s was in the bottom of the “U” shaped corridor, while the main sitting room was at the top of the U’s two upper limbs.  Each resident’s room has a 2’ x 2’ framed display case outside the door in which photos of the resident in younger days, and pictures of their family, are pinned.  I made sure when I moved mom in last May, along with photos of the grandkids, to pin up a color photo of mom at age 18 – I wanted the aides to know that she was more than the frail, confused Ellie they see before her; that there was a time when she was full of life, young, creative, sharp of memory and insightful of thought, enthusiastic traveler, devoted reader, lover of sweet music whose operatic soprano wafted through our home while she was cooking, and an effervescent entertainer who could remember names precisely, even if they happened to be “di-ribbity-ribbity-do.” 

So I have been making a point, largely for the same reason, of looking at the younger photos of my mom’s fellow residents in the memory care unit, pinned in their own glass display cases along with pictures of their families – smiling couples, young and happy youngsters who some decades from now may well be sitting in a room very like one of these talking to a woman they believe is named “di-ribbity-ribbity-do.”  All I know of the other Alzheimer and dementia patients who share my mom’s wing here are the quiet facades of mannequins whose intellect and awareness has faded like teapot steam, whose conversation runs in cycles of unresolved puzzlement, whose personal needs from getting up and dressing to showering and toiletry require the attendance of one or more of the aides like “di-ribbity-ribbity-do.”  But, like my mom, there is much more to these people.  They once were young, had full, vividly complex lives, lifetimes of memories, loves and joys, pain and passion, networks of friends and families, things that existed now only in the faded color and monochromatic photos pinned to the bulletin boards inside those hushed glass display cases.   So I take the time to look at those pictures, matching them to the frozen countenances I recognize in the big room, those faces that now stare at dust or grimace uncontrollably or gaze without apparent comprehension at the blaring TV set as it plays old movies, old Oprah, or old Huell Howser.  Ah, this was Harry.  This was Betty.  This was the one who murmurs.  There is more to each of them than what I see sitting in that other room, before Alzheimer’s or dementia siphoned so much of their being out into the ether and left a confused, unhappy, bewildered shell behind, shuffling with situational ignorance along that unremembered road.

The aides see that too, and I am thankful for that.  Glad they see beyond the human husks, understanding the grinning young man Harry used to be, the happily posing woman Betty had been, the buoyant lady my mother once was.  They take good care of her here.   Especially the one mom calls “di-ribbity-ribbity-do.” 

- Randall D. Larson / 11/01/2010