Road Signs, Leaves, and Love
By Rev. Matt Linn, SJ
Matt is a Jesuit priest who with Dennis and Sheila Linn gives retreats and has written 20 books on healing life’s hurts. For a link to their website see the Staff and Contributors section of this issue.

Late fall is a time when grief surfaces with leaves falling, and the sun no longer is able to push back the chill of coming winter. Now, when I see golden leaves falling, I am reminded of what my mother taught me about being loved where I am grieving. Early in her battle with Alzheimer’s, my mother was still able to relate to others, so I would drive with her to my retreats where she could give hugs and pray for the retreatants. She loved them and they loved her. Since she was a reading teacher, reading the highway signs to me made her feel more secure. It also reminded her of how for thirty years she helped hundreds to read and could still help me too, even if she was sidelined by memory problems.

One time, on a trip to Milwaukee, she loudly read every sign, “Burger King, next exit…Have it your way….Burger King three miles….Truckers welcome…Burger King this exit…Playground for kids…Burger King, hungry for a Whopper?” I never realized there were so many signs advertising everything from burgers to bathrooms, but she found and read every sign. I panicked because I conservatively estimated that 10 billboards each mile, totaling 3,410 billboards, would be read to me as we drove between Minneapolis and Milwaukee.

Desperately I tried to get her to focus on the beautiful fall trees or saying her rosary. I explained that I could read the signs and didn’t need any read to me. After about 20 seconds of golden silence, she would forget what I had just said and compulsively return to reading the signs, “Pepsi Cola, the pause that refreshes.” I turned on the radio and then a tape, but she gave no refreshing pause and would interrupt with the next sign she thought that I needed. So I tried to gratefully listen to my feelings; anxiety and anger at being bombarded by every ad for the six hours to Milwaukee and arriving totally frazzled rather than peaceful and ready to give a retreat.

Then it dawned on me, I was just as compulsive about having a peaceful drive while silently enjoying the fall leaves as my mother was about enjoying how she could still read signs and help another. I prayed the serenity prayer to recover my peace. “God grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I could not change anything in her advancing Alzheimer confusion. Could I accept it in any way?

Suddenly I realized that soon she would be too confused to speak or come with me on retreats. I knew that soon she would be locked in Alzheimer’s silence, and I would look back on this trip as a special moment that we had shared. Slowly I felt grateful for her ability to read. She was clinging to it as the only thing still normal in her advancing senility. From then on, her reading was like background music teaching me her way of grieving so many losses, by letting go of what she could no longer do and yet fully entering into what she could still do. She was giving me a short course on how to survive the journey that I feared the most-her journey into senility in whatever way it might come for me.

I gratefully breathed in how God and I loved her just the way she was. I then knew, too, how God and others would love me on the journey that I feared the most. My deepest anxiety wasn’t having all the signs read to me for six hours but being for months or years on her journey into confusion and stony silence.

This too was being healed as I smiled and gratefully enjoyed each sign she could still read. We were both loved. That was the last trip we were able to take together. A year later she couldn’t read or hardly speak a sentence.

And yes, it is now one of my fondest memories. When I see golden leaves falling, I recall how my mother taught me on our Milwaukee autumn journey. I too am loved wherever I fear or grieve that my leaf is also falling.

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