Mustering Courage (HeartSong Presents #425)
By Lynn A. Coleman
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one
“Kayla!”
Kayla turned off the kitchen faucet and craned her body around the door casing.” Yes, Gram,” she yelled, loud enough to wake the dead, though she knew her great-grandmother would barely hear.
“Not you. The other Kayla.”
Kayla rolled her eyes, slumped back into the kitchen, dried off her hands, and went to her grandmother. “Hi, Gram.”
“Kayla,” she smiled. “I was hoping I’d see you today.”
She took a seat across from her great-grandmother and noticed an old photo album with black pages in her grandmother’s lap.
Freda Brown was ninety-two and in the mid stages of Alzheimer’s. Kayla, the oldest great-grandchild, had finished college and offered to take care of her until the disease progressed to the necessity of twenty-four-hour care. Reluctantly, the family had agreed. Their concerns had focused on her youth and her need for a life of her own. But in Kayla’s heart she just couldn’t see taking her great-grandmother out of the only home she’d known for over seventy years, an old farmhouse sitting by a lake. Most of the land was being cultivated by area farmers, and the rent helped with taxes and other expenses.
The pictures, brown and yellowed, some faded from the years, while a few were still clear, were of people and places of which Kayla had no knowledge. She reached for the picture in Freda’s blue-veined hand. “Who is this, Gram?”
“Oh, that’s your brother.”
‘Your brother?’ My brother Jeremy is at college, has reddish brown hair, and is built like a tree trunk. This person is thin as a rail, has black hair—although it is tough to tell in a black-and-white photograph—and he might fit under Jeremy’s wingspread. Okay, Lord, who does she think I am now? “Gram, who am I?”
“Honestly, Joann, I don’t understand these silly games you play. You know perfectly well who you are!”
Joann, Gram’s younger sister. Gotcha! That means this would be a picture of Freda’s brother, either Robert or Richard. Which one? Kayla didn’t have a clue. “How old is Robert here?” she guessed.
Freda took the snapshot and examined it more closely. Kayla watched as her grandmother’s blue eyes darkened with fear from confusion. Freda’s hands trembled as her gaze implored Kayla for the answer. After spending many days and months with her great-grandmother, Kayla knew Gram wouldn’t ask. Admitting confusion was to admit having dementia. Holding back her own tears, Kayla brushed the gray curls from her grandmother’s face. “It’s okay, Gram. It doesn’t matter right now. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Coffee would be nice. You look familiar. . . Do you know my granddaughter, Kayla?”
“Yes, I do.”
“She’s a fine young woman, isn’t she?” Freda asked as Kayla helped her up from a chair and escorted her to the table.
“She’s okay. Gram, would you like a cookie?” Kayla knew her great-grandmother had a sweet tooth, and anything sweet was guaranteed instant success. Often Kayla would have to hide the dessert so her great-grandmother would eat her entire meal first.
Dealing with a patient with Alzheimer’s took a lot of patience. But Kayla knew the day was coming when even her perseverance wouldn’t be enough. She prayed often that the Lord would take her great-grandmother home to be with Him in Heaven, long before she suffered. Some days Kayla thought the request selfish. Other days, like today, when she saw the frustration and confusion Freda experienced, Kayla felt the prayer was justified.
Broken images and memories in her mind. . .misdirected brain waves. . .that was the best way Kayla could imagine the disease. Oh sure, she knew it was caused by hardening of the arteries in the brain, that the nerve endings were balling up in places. But in the end it simply came down to being unable to recover memories. Whether they were from two seconds or eighty years ago, it didn’t matter, not at this point.
Kayla poured her great-grandmother a cup of coffee and handed her the creamer to pour for herself. Another test of patience. It was easier to do it for her, but she needed to encourage Freda’s dignity in any small way she could.
Kayla thanked God for the time spent as a child with her grandmother. She had loved visiting the old house, loved playing on the lake. Gram’s house remained a childhood memory as strong and vibrant as the woman herself once was.
Kayla poured a glass of ice tea for herself. All through college she could never get herself to drink coffee. She had tried, but found it just too bitter for her taste buds. Now she slumped back into the tall Windsor chair and placed her feet on the leg brace under the table. When she was small she had played under there, using the support structure as an elaborate apartment for her dolls. Of course, Jeremy felt it was the perfect place for his toy cars. It soon became a contest as to who could slip away and gain possession of one of the many fun spots in the house. She slipped off her shoe and felt the beam with her toes.” Gram, do you remember the time Jeremy carved his name in the table?”
“Your father was livid, embarrassed mostly. You see, when your daddy was little he carved his name in my nightstand.”
“Really?”
“Sure enough. I can show you where. I still look at it from time to time.” Freda smiled.
Kayla traced the “J” with her big toe. Her brother had suffered for this infraction, he had his jackknife taken away for a month. He was in cub scouts at the time, and Dad had taken a corner off of his “chit” card. If he lost all four corners he’d have to earn the merit badge over. But now, feeling the carving with her toes, her memory of her brother was vivid and special. It’s a wonder how our mistakes can be turned around, she mused.
“Eleanor, did I tell you about the time Edwin lost his leg?”
Eleanor was Kayla’s mother; Edwin, Kayla’s great-grandfather. “Tell me.” Kayla smiled and took another sip.
“Ed was fifteen at the time. He and a bunch of his buddies where jumping the train, taking rides here and there. Mostly they just went to the other end of town and such, but this one time he jumped too late and missed. His leg was crushed and severed by the wheels. But it never slowed the man down. He learned to walk with a wooden leg, and he managed to work hard for his family. He made a mistake and he learned from it. God was gracious and spared his life.”
Kayla knew the story, and amazingly enough, she understood the connection Gram had made between Jeremy carving his name in the table and their great-grandfather jumping a train.
“Sin is sin,” Freda continued to enlighten. “Your brother, your father, and my husband, all sinned at one time or another. But forgiveness covers our mistakes and we move on.”
“I understand, Gram.” Kayla, though still young in comparison to her great-grandmother, was well aware of past sin in her own life.
Gram’s strong personality, though sometimes grating, generally yielded to the Holy Spirit. When Kayla was younger she had thought her great-grandmother was simply seemed the sweet little old “grandma” people typically pictured. Now she was learning some of her grandmother’s other sides. Because Alzheimer’s stripped away self-control, Kayla frequently witnessed some of those angry outbursts she knew had been part of her great-grandmother’s earlier life. Freda had told her on more than one occasion of her temper, now controlled by God’s grace. Kayla had once found it hard to believe, having never seen her great-grandmother’s anger in action. Now she no longer questioned it.
“Kayla,” Freda grasped her hand. “I don’t like not remembering, being confused. It’s a regular pain in the—”
“I know, Gram,” Kayla interrupted her as another side of the disease cropped its ugly head. The lack of self-control affected so many areas. Some patients became sweeter, while others had problems controlling their language; the disease manifested itself in each person so differently. Kayla was discouraged by literature that claimed it was common for family members to develop the disease. Kayla petitioned the Lord one more time, Please protect me from this disease, Lord. She shuddered at the thought and vigorously rubbed her bare arms.
“Cold?” Freda asked.
“I’m okay.” Kayla got up from the table and carried her glass to the sink.
With dinner in the oven, Kayla went to her room to work on the lesson for her Sunday school class, the parable of the mustard seed. Kayla reread the verses from Matthew 13:31-33:
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.
The picturesque parable was one of her favorite passages. But how could she convey the meaning to children who were only three to six years old. . . ? Kayla slid her chair back and began to pace. She stopped at her bureau, her jewelry box catching her attention. It was hand-carved teak, a gift from Grandpa Max, Freda’s son, on her thirteenth birthday. A smile spread across her face. She caressed the finely carved rosebud on top of the box. He sure knew how to work with wood, she reflected.
Her memory jogged. When she was little her mother had given her a charm bracelet, one charm contained a mustard seed. Kayla pulled out the bottom drawer and rummaged through. There, she found it. It was well worn, the gold finish long since faded. In fact, she had two charms with mustard seeds, she realized. One was a single seed in a bubble of glass, the other a small, rectangular gold box with plastic windows filled with the small seeds. “Excellent!”
The stove’s buzzer went off, and she hurried back to the kitchen. As she passed her great-grandmother asleep in her chair, she thanked the Lord that Freda’s hearing was less than perfect.
Kayla pulled out the roasted chicken, baked potatoes, and glazed carrots, then placed them on top of the stove.
“Smells great! What’s for supper?” a male voice called from the back door.