I noticed them during the second hymn that Sunday morning. While everyone else stood and sang along, I saw that Sylvia and Jim were still sitting in their seats at the end of the aisle. Sylvia was bent over at the waist. Jim’s hand rested gently on her back.

From the gentle bob of her head, I could tell that Sylvia was weeping.  

As I watched their silent agony unfold, there on an otherwise perfectly lovely Sunday morning in October, between verses three and four of What a Friend We Have in Jesus, my own throat grew thick and clumsy. Tears formed in the corners of my eyes, and I had to look away.

“Jesus,” I prayed silently. “If you were really their friend, you’d fix this.”

When I first met them four years ago, Jim and Sylvia were a happy, lively couple. Jim was a mental health professional and Sylvia his devoted partner. I mean sure, everyone knew that Jim tended to exaggerate and bloviate whenever he was in large group of people. Otherwise, they were fun folks. They laughed a lot and made thought provoking contributions to whatever topic was unfolding.

And then, a little over two years ago, things started to change. A few of us noticed that Sylvia started repeating herself in conversations. She no longer seemed as bubbly and self-assured as before. Her eyes darted nervously around whenever she entered a room… as if she were trying to take in all the details of a new place. 

Even when that place was the church she had joined 15 years ago.

We also noticed that Jim seemed a bit more solicitous in the way he interacted with her… helping her pull out a chair and sit down at one of the round tables in the Fellowship Hall… bending down to listen very closely when he asked what she wanted from the snack table. 

Then finally, when Sylvia looked me directly in the eye after church one day and earnestly asked, “I’m sorry, have we met?” I knew. I knew that demon dementia had found its way into Jim and Sylvia’s peaceful haven.

I also knew that when it came, it came with a mission; to ignite a blazing bonfire into which all their trips, all their stories, all their shared memories of experiences and people, all their “in jokes,” all their pet names, and code words would be thrown. 

And then finally, when there was nothing else left to burn, that monster would turn on Sylvia and consume her completely.

It would be there forever. 

And the tragedy I was witnessing today – as verse three turned to verse four – was the tragedy of insight. Today, sitting there in church, Sylvia found herself at the most horrible nexus possible. She sat at the crossroads of Consciousness and Oblivion. She was still lucid enough to know what was happening and where this road was taking her. She knew her world would only get stranger, more foreign, more threatening, less comfortable, and lonelier. 

She also knew there was nothing that she, or Jim, or the brightest doctors in the entire world could do to stop the inexorable closing of those curtains. 

She knew her entire life was about to become a menacing lunar landscape filled with strangers.

She wanted, more than anything, for Jesus to become the kind of supernatural friend who would command the world to spin back the other way and reverse the course of this slow-motion mental dissolution.

She also – tragically – retained just enough awareness to know this demon disease was something even Jesus couldn’t beat.

And so, on that Sunday, sitting there in the second row on the aisle, as that old familiar hymn came to a close, Sylvia hung her head and wept. 

“Dear God,” I prayed, “Come close to Jim and Sylvia today. Come close in such a real, tangible way that they can feel your loving arms wrapped tightly around them. Give them the peace of knowing you will never leave them or forsake them… no matter how dark the road ahead becomes. AMEN.”

And then I wept too.

Abundant blessings;