Memory Part 5
February 15, 2025
Memory Part 5
When I visit my old friend in the memory unit of his retirement facility, he doesn't know who I am. He is around my age, and we have been very good friends for decades. I attended his wedding, and we became fathers around the same time. We shared our faith over the years. He is a wonderful person whose disease slowly took him away from his dear family and from lots of us who cared about him. Ralph, I will call him, is an intelligent man with a varied career and many experiences that make his life interesting and colorful. His most incredible qualities are warmth and knack for seeing the truth.
I am not proud of the fact that I had to work up the courage to visit Ralph the first time — I kept delaying my going to see him because of a combination of sadness and grief. And there is always the notion that his disease may very well happen to me.
When I first visited him after he entered the residential facility, I wondered if he would feel awkward being with a "stranger." However, he treated me like the old friend that I am, even if he did not "know" me or call me by name. Could it be that he recognized me on some deep level?
Could Ralph have recognized me on the soul level where names and appearances do not matter? On the soul level, relationships are not about ego transactions. The soul is about exchanging love, promoting someone else's spiritual growth, well-being, and harmony.
In the soul, we rely not on what the ego responds to, like our personal histories and appearances, but on the present moment, the arising of the present moment, and the love experienced. On the soul level, we feel one another's essence and the qualities of our most authentic nature. Yes, in our soulality, we express the aspect of the divine we were created to be, regardless of our outer circumstances, ego, or personality.
When with Ralph, I still experience his warmth, hospitality, and presence. Because the outer layers of his ego have diminished, the purity of his soul is more apparent to me. The most difficult fact for me is that my ego misses Ralph — we can no longer share the stories we used to share and exchange ideas like we once did. But the soul doesn't require the stories and appearances of the ego.
Thanks to my friend, Renee Brown Harmon, MD, who wrote, Surfing the Waves of Alzheimer's, I am learning that on the level of the soul, deep connections do not require the ego at all. Renee gave the world an excellent book about her husband, Harvey Harmon, MD. The book tenderly recounts Harvey’s and Renee’s journey with Alzheimer's disease and how they and their girls managed its life-altering effects. Their soul connection with one another never left and remains even after Harvey's passing.
After all, an infant doesn't have a developed ego, but our interaction with her transcends the ego level and takes us to the most beautiful level of being — the level of soul. We can relate to everyone on this level.
Spiritual practice: Make arrangements to visit someone in the nursing home who has memory issues. Practice being present with the person and discover how the souls come through.
Self-inquiry: Why is it easy for us to be with an infant who has little to no memory but difficult to be with an adult who has lost their memory?
Dear God,
Thank you for Ralph, who teaches me more about the soul. I am truly grateful and ask for your blessings on him and his family. Amen
