Meditation Times With Elma : Navigating the Troubles Seas of Dementia: a Love Story

AN ODYSSEY THROUGH THE TROUBLED SEAS OF DEMENTIA

- A LOVE STORY

It had gone to episodes of sudden confusion and rage,

triggered by nothing I could ever identify. Then paranoia,

people "upstairs in our home" to be taken care of somehow.

I told her: "We're in a new season. We've never been old

before. We've got to learn to trust God in this time too."

The discharging nurse's last greeting was: "It'll get worse . . ."

"Keith", she said: "Don't be afraid. It's going to be all right."

She was unbelievable-reassuring me.

By then she had lost almost all of her abilities-even to hold a

fork or to scratch her own nose.

She initiated her own blink signals: one for "yes", two for

"kisses", three for "I love you". Dance?-o yes, we still danced.

Jitter-bug moves-seated. If you were watching, probably

pretty comic. .

It's this period, three years of the Last Season, that began to

hold a sweetness for us.

Keith Hueftle is a former pastor (Scotland, and inner city Detroit) and Christian conference director (southern Indiana). While training in Edinburgh, Scotland, with the Iona Community, he met Elma. Together, they came to inner city Detroit and an interracial ministry. As white churches folded, Keith started teaching in inner city schools in order for them to stay in the inner city.

His call to head the Barn Abbey, a conference center in southern Indiana, opened up teaching, lecturing, and writing opportunities. Elma's organizational and intellectual gifts were likewise being recognized; and she began to be called on as speaking-coach and as mentor/teacher with mothers of pre-schoolers (MOPS).