The Library is Burning
In Senegal, there is a phrase used for someone who is dying: it is said that their library is burning. The word picture painted here is so poignant and sobering that anything I add threatens to take away from the beauty of its simplicity. What I can do, however, is tell the part of my story that resonates.
When my mother first started losing her memory to Alzheimer’s disease, we were concerned about her. Would she remember where she parked her car? Would she be able to get home from the hairdresser? What must she be feeling? Thinking? How could we help her? These questions, and more, dominated our conversations. I don’t remember when the thoughts about how it would affect us started creeping in, but selfishly they did. Would she still be able to help us with our kids? Would Dad be able to take care of the household? Who would remember everyones birthdays and keep the family connected? Who would be my mom?
The love a mother has for her children knows no limits.
The love a mother has for her children knows no limits. It defies time. I needed my mother’s nurturing presence in my thirties as much as I'd needed it at three. The thought of her slowly, albeit unwillingly, retreating from us was devastating. And the reality of it was even worse. In a desperate attempt to hold on to what we had left, I would ask her to remember vacations we’d taken, how to make her homemade vegetable soup that had no recipe, or to recount stories from my childhood. She would try her best, and sometimes there were clear recollections, but there were also times when she would just say, “Sorry love, it’s like there’s cottonwool in my brain," and I knew not to push.
In my soul I knew her library was burning and there were volumes I had not yet bothered to read.
At some point my need to have her remember things was replaced with an even deeper desire to know her. After years of pretending to listen to her stories or foolishly ignoring her advice, I suddenly found myself hanging on to every word or being frustrated with the void where words once stood. I wanted to know what her dreams were as a child, why she chose to marry my dad, how she'd felt when she held me in her arms. It was an achingly insatiable desire, because in my soul I knew her library was burning and there were volumes I had not yet bothered to read.
A book saved from the fire.
After Mum died, I found a book she had started writing in as we went through her things. It was a Hallmark-type fill-in-the-prompt book called “Mother’s memories: for my daughter.” I didn’t realize it at first, but I had stumbled upon gold. As I flipped through the pages, a collection of photographs fell out and scattered on the floor. I recognized my mom as a child, her black-and-white wedding photograph, and several more of my sister and I as children. The book was unfinished, in fact less than a third had been completed in her scribbly cursive handwriting that I knew and loved. But there were stories inside that I had never heard. The aunt she spent summer vacations with, the smell of Rooibos tea boiling on her grandmother’s stove, the names of her dogs, Rusty and Blackie, and the room she shared with her neater-than-her sister. It was a gift more valuable than anything passed on to me from her estate. A book saved from the fire.
Ask those you love to tell you their stories while the pages can still be turned.
I believe my mom knew that she stood on the edge of an abyss. She knew that Alzheimer’s was plotting arson and had already struck the first match. And so, she wrote. She recorded her stories so that we could remember her for more than where she’d been or what she’d done, and rather for who she was. This spoke to me of our basic human need to be known, and today, that looks like me remembering my mom on the anniversary of her death. For those of us still on this side of the silent lands, I see two opportunities: create the stories to add to the volumes in your library, but perhaps more importantly, ask those you love to tell you their stories while the pages can still be turned.