I have done a lot of funerals.  A lot of funerals.  I keep a book where I write every Baptism, Wedding and Funeral.  The names and dates of the people are there.  There are many more funerals than there are Weddings and Baptisms.  That fact has never bothered me.  I like funerals, but some of them are weighing on me.

I entered ministry and Chaplain work at the end of the AIDS epidemic.  We were seeing people die every day in 1991.  There were babies who died of AIDS.  There were young men and women were dying.  There were mature and older men and women dying.  At the time I thought it would never stop.  And then it became a thing of the past.  People die of AIDS these days, but there are not more people dying of AIDS than other diseases.

I believe I now I stand at the beginning of another epidemic.  The Alzheimer epidemic.  All the questions and all the answers are difficult. All the decisions the families have to make are hard.  They have to work through these decisions with very little guidance.  It is not sweet like a movie.

Death is always sad and touching.  We stand with the family as they mourn.  Our American tradition entails us remembering the person in stories and pictures.  We look at our loved ones and each other on sunny days at the lake or blowing out the candles at a birthday party.   When I am preparing the funeral sermon, I ask families questions .  "What was the funniest thing your Mother ever did?"  "How did you and your husband meet?"  "What did your Dad love to do more than any thing else?"  Those are living questions.

The questions are about who the person was and how they lived their lives. "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19 (NRSV).  The way we spend our time and our lives tells us what we value.

I have begun to notice something in Alzheimer families.  The families lost the patient a long time ago.  The sons and daughters have trouble remembering their mother before this muddled person moved into her body.  The wife or husband struggle to find that thread of who he or she was before they fell silent.

The weeks, months, perhaps even years, have been difficult.  The person can get on a track and you cannot distract them from the phrase or the idea.  In that moment, you wish they would forget what they are fixated on. And we -- the wives, husbands, sons and daughters-- begin to forget their smiles and laughter.

I have come to understand an even more tragic aspect of this disease.  The person forgets themselves. They loose who they are and were.  You and I can remember being 6, 13 or 31.  In the end even that is gone. 

Who are you?  Who am I?  Can you think of forgetting who you are?   It is so difficult to understand.  I might forget myself.

Peace
Ann