One of these days we’ll both be fine
Crossing the Bar
My grandmother was a very religious woman who loved poetry. Tennyson was her favourite. At her funeral, I read Tennyson’s poem “Crossing the Bar”.
My mother is starting to forget her parents are dead.
There’s a lot of advice out there that says don’t tell Alzheimer’s patients their loved ones are no longer alive when they ask for them because it can cause distress.
This is probably good advice for some people with the disease, but I’ve learned, at this moment in time, lying to my mother about her parents is not helpful.
She is between two worlds—the world of knowing and the world of not knowing.
Once when she asked where her parents were, I said they were busy—thinking this was better than saying they were dead.
“Are they even alive?” she asked me disgusted.
“No,” I confessed.
“Well, then why did you say they were busy?” she snapped.
I told her I was trying to not upset her.
She said she preferred the truth.
*
When she asks if her mother is still alive, I now say no.
This prompts her to remember that I read “Crossing the Bar” at my grandmother’s funeral. She will say, “That’s right, you read that poem, and you read it beautifully.”
We find the poem on my phone and read it together.
Even though I am a poet, sometimes I forget how powerful poetry can be. That one poem tethers my mother to her mother’s funeral in such an important and unexpected way.
I remember rehearsing the poem over and over so I wouldn’t mess it up. My mother heard me read “Crossing the Bar” a hundred or more times before the funeral, which is why it has probably stayed so vividly in her memory.