Holy

After David retired from St. Vincent de Paul he volunteered in the food bank, so he was still coming to the Georgetown campus. I remember him walking around the administrative offices, stopping into different offices, all smiles. He would tell Ned Delmore, the Executive Director, "you are a holy man," with a grin and a laugh.

This was his refrain for many of the conversations he had, as his vocabulary by this time was severely limited. This was a mainstay phrase of his conversations for nearly a year. "You are a holy woman," he would tell Chris in the payroll department. It made people smile. It made David smile, which was always a pleasure to see. He was speaking simply, but with much feeling and emotion. His years of ministry to others was being boiled-down to these simple phrases, and his true spirit of contentment, playfulness, and meaningful reflection, shined through.

He stopped using that phrase after he moved into Gaffney House. Other gestures and emotion came through to those around him, but few words. I know he is capable of speech because there are times when he is effervescent and chatty (see previous blog). But more often than not, he doesn't speak much anymore.

Which is why a recent visit turned so delightful.

When I arrived today David was napping, sitting upright, on the couch. I nudged him awake. He looked around, then looked at me. Puzzled at first--he had just woken up--but then he smiled at me. "Walk?"he mumbled. Yes, and off we went. Once we got out the door, I asked him 'how are you feeling today?' He turned to me with a grin and said "I feel holy."

Wow! I was overcome with sweet memories of hearing this again. I repeated it back, and he nodded and smiled. I was surprised how deeply moved I was--that this recollection of a 'phrase gone by' had brought such a deeply satisfying and happy experience in me.

In reflecting on this it occurs to me that something else is happening; instead of always relying on the memories of when he was well, instead I was drawing from a time when his diminishment was well underway, and it still gave me joy.

The lesson for me was this: I can no longer wish or hope that David will return to his former self, and sometimes I think I keep that unreasonable hope alive by using the memory of him being well as my anchor of reference when I'm with him. While those memories are precious and will never leave me, to always rely on them reinforces an unrealistic expectation, and also takes away from what he offers us now: glimpses of himself shining through Alzheimer's.

And when it happens, it can be a sight to behold.

David at Easter Time

Ask anyone. David's favorite time of the religious year has always been Easter. I've never known a man who was so inspired with the hopeful message of the resurrection story. He loved the connection to the personal resurrections that we experience in our lives: our own life challenges and tragedies, our eventual recovery from them, and the newly-inspired purpose in life that often comes with the hardships we endure. He believed everyone could rise from their circumstances, and his message and counsel to those he served was consistent with that ideal.  

When I visited David on Good Friday, I found him bubbling with life, all smiles and laughs, with non-stop conversation about things going on in the house. What was striking was how positive he felt about his housemates at Gaffney House. Everything was said with such heartfelt inflection, that if often drew him to tears. Not from his own sadness, but from the goodness he was feeling about others.

David has the gift to see the goodness in others because he's in touch with his own goodness. He often spoke about how lucky he was in life--that even with its various complications--he enjoyed everything about it. He loved his family--was the 'teller of stories' and would captivate the room retelling often hysterically funny stories about family history. He was thankful for his ministry--the various roles he was able to play, and the people he was able to serve throughout his 43 years as a priest was very rewarding to him. He was grateful to have a partner in his life and the opportunity to share the hardships and triumphs of our personal journeys was a blessing to us both.

David is happy. He is still able to express that. It's up to us to enter that happiness with him, even when we don't understand his words.  Watch his expressions. Listen to the tone and inflection in his words.  Smile and laugh along with him.  And just play along.

Steve Knipp, 2014

Echoes of David

David and I were spending our usual Sunday morning together--which starts at the iHop Pancake House and moves on to mass at St. Ignatius--when he began to look around at all the people in the restaurant. His eyes began to glisten as he canvassed the various scenes of people. I asked him what he was thinking about. He looked at me with a look on his face that was deeply contemplative, with tears welling in his eyes. He pointed to the crowd of people in the restaurant, bottom lip quivering, and said:

"It's so nice to be alive...and to like people." 

One thing that has been incredibly difficult to accept of David's condition is the way his speech has been so severely limited, and his thoughts truncated. Words rarely come, and when they do, they are often one-word replies. David spent the bulk of his life inspiring others by the words he spoke, and I was fortunate to be the recipient of his words and feelings because of our long life together. In those few words, there was an undeniable echo of many conversations we have had in the past, and I can sometimes piece together what he means when the words he speaks are so few. The look on his face when he made this statement was genuine with a raw emotion that spoke volumes. 

David woke each morning with a fresh awareness of the gift that another day brings.  He enjoyed solitude in the mornings, and had a routine of reading the daily Mass Missal and reflecting on the teachings. His work with people with AIDS for over ten years gave him a deeper appreciation for life than most have, and impressed on him the gift that being alive brings. Life is a temporary condition, and the importance of appreciating it every day was not lost on him.  

Given his vocation, people were also the centerpiece of his daily activities. They came to him with their joys and sorrows, and his gentle presence was a comfort to thousands of people over his 40+ year career. His relationships were paramount to his experience of life, and the older and more experienced he became, the more profoundly he believed that people should not be alone in life, that having others in our lives adds a rich dimension that is unsurpassed by anything else life can offer. 

When David says "It's so nice to be alive...and to like people," the meaning is clear to me; even though he has lost so much--and I truly believe he knows this at some level--he can still appreciate the beauty of being alive. When we walk around the block, he looks around at the trees and the buildings and the people like he was seeing them for the first time. The care he receives from the good people at Gaffney House remind him that people are not only basically good, but indeed necessary. 

After he was initially diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he began to tell me and others that 

"I have a start of Alzheimer's in my life.

It's part of getting older.  But I believe we can be alive in new ways."

What David is saying, I believe, is that even with such a catastrophic loss, his joy for life remains, and his love for others persists. Even when he is unable to express it with words we can understand.