Even If We Forget Him
Around the time Abuela lost all independent mobility and could no longer communicate, I was almost obsessively thinking about things most kids in their early 20’s probably don’t care about, things like eternity, the afterlife, the concept of forever: Generally pleasant things that sent me into a downward spiral of anxiety and depression. I don’t think we, as humans, are equipped to handle such large concepts very well. I would often talk to The Lord about my fears.
I was sitting with Abuela in her living room in this mindset when the following thought entered my head:
“Lord, what if I don’t know You one day? What if I get this disease and forget You?”
The thought terrified me. Nothing was worse than the idea of losing Him — of forgetting the One who had always been with me, of not being able to communicate with him, of not knowing him. That sounded a lot like Hell. It sounds silly now to say it out loud as I write this, but I wondered what that would mean for my soul, for my salvation, if my mind ever went the way hers had.
I prayed, really prayed, so hard then, “God, whatever happens, don’t let me not know you”.
In that quiet moment, I felt His response settle deep in my spirit. A peace and relief flooded over me like a warm hug, and as tears streamed down my face Jesus gently told me,
“You’re already mine. I created you. I chose you. There’s nothing you can do to separate yourself from me, and nothing that happens to you can ever take me away from you.”
With that, something inside me unclenched. It didn’t matter if the same happened to me in the distant future, I belonged to God, forever and if I forget him on earth, I will fully know Him when we meet again. Then I understood that His love doesn’t depend on our memory of Him. Even if we forget, He remembers. If our minds go, the good news is, He owns our spirit. He died for it, we were created with intention and bought back at a price regardless of our mental state. Once we are His, there is absolutely nothing we (or our body) can do to take that from us.
“See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me.” Isaiah 49:16.
That verse always brings me back to something from my teenage years. In high school, I was in an extremely competitive program—one that traded college credit for five hours of sleep a night. To survive those four exhausting years, I developed the habit of writing everything I couldn’t afford to forget on my hand. It became my daily checklist, the place I knew I’d look again and again. I wrote it in pen so it wouldn’t smudge or fade.
But Jesus writes differently. What He writes—our names, our stories, our worth—is written in scars and blood that cannot be washed away. Once I understood that, I realized that even if Abuela’s mind was slipping, her spirit wasn’t lost to Him. And because of that, I felt a pull to share the gospel with her.
Sometimes I would go downstairs when no one was around and read the Bible to Abuela. I wasn’t sure if she could understand me but I knew her spirit was alive and well. Rubbing her hand gently, I’d whisper in her ear, talking directly to her spirit,
“You are loved by Jesus. He Died for you and you are saved. You already belong to Him. When you die you will go to heaven and be with Jesus”.
I just wanted her to be comforted I guess. Though she couldn’t respond, I wanted her spirit to hear those words and to know that she was still His. She always prayed the rosary and I believed she was saved, but I wanted to share the message with her the way I had heard it. She didn’t appear to notice me but I know that her spirit was receiving it.
It was in those quiet moments that I began to understand a deeper truth about caregiving. You see, as caregivers we mustn’t only do things because they have to get done -although what we do daily may feel chorelike over time. When that starts to happen we need to remind ourselves that this is a soul we are taking care of, a precious soul in a body and it’s our job to nurture the body until the time the soul is called back home. It is difficult to view the world through a spiritual lense, but we must make an effort to do this. If the person’s mind is gone, let’s make an effort to still nourish their spirit and share God’s word with them.
As time passed, I would whisper in her ear that even if some part of her was scared to let go, it was going to be okay because on the other side of death was the very One who created and gave us life, with her name written on his hand, waiting eagerly with outstretched arms.
Those moments spent reading the bible to Grandma and whispering truths about the Lord to her became reminders for me too. I don’t need to have all the answers in this world, and some things are too big for me to worry about. It’s enough to know that Jesus loves me and nothing, even a wandering mind, can separate us.
To my fellow caregivers, disease sufferers or worrywarts, let that fill you with some hope.