She may yet forget more. But, no matter how much she forgets, the Lord who has loved her and saved her will never forget her: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.”

I go there from time to time. The lady I visit is the wife of an old friend from another part of the country. He went to be with the Lord several years ago. Even then, she had begun, as the British can affectionately say, “to lose her marbles.” Since then, in God’s kindness, she has been moved to a nursing home not far from where I serve.

I visit when I can, not least as she has not been able to come to the church services very often. While the physical environment is delightful, and the care staff seem diligent and caring, there are many sad sights and sounds and smells.

On this last occasion, there was an old man sitting on a chair just inside the front door. He was trying to put in his false teeth. He could not work out how to do it, and kept pushing them in upside down and back to front. One of the staff found him and patiently tried to help him get it all sorted out.

I walked through to find my friend. In the room where she was sitting there was a lady shouting for help. To be fair, she is probably often shouting for help, and so the staff kept working with other individuals. However, when she became insistent and agitated, it became clear that she needed to get to a toilet quickly. Her cries of need echoed down the corridor as she was wheeled away.

One lady seemed competent to the point of bossy. One quickly got the impression that she had probably had a very responsible position in life, and that was still foremost in her mind. Five or six times in the course of thirty minutes she checked with me (and with several others) to make sure that they knew what they were doing – usually taking responsibility for a property of some sort. When in doubt, she assigned various duties to people, making sure that we were all up to speed.

In one corner of the room an old man came in and sat down. The sun filtered through the window in bright beams in front of him. He reached into one of the beams, twisting his fingers as if trying to catch something. Whatever he thought he was capturing obviously tasted good, in his mind at least, because he kept trying to get whatever he thought was in his hands into his mouth. Needless to say, he seemed to become a little frustrated.

And then there was my friend. While she remains in good physical health, her memory has continued to suffer. She looked well, and seemed to be neat in her person. There is still an intelligence there, but a little .. what? Further back? Redirected? Misapplied? She is still forthright and direct, with a little mischief. She has her good days, and her bad days. On this day she rambled a little – not one of her better days. That said, I only got some of the usual stories. Her first concern was that I take proper account of her shoes. Then she was rather fixed upon the daffodils, and that seemed to spark a variety of reflections on colour. Colour was very important to her on this particular day. The yellows were clearly exciting, but the greens and blues were also quite stimulating. I did wonder if this would be one of the days when it would be hard to keep any conversation on track.

But then we were able to get to the Bible. I mentioned some recent sermons, and suggested that we could read from the eighth of Romans. “If you want,” she said. I opened the Bible. She grabbed it.

That’s fairly normal. If I suggest singing a hymn, she agrees, and then cracks on. She knows so many of the older hymns, especially those from a particular hymnbook with which she is familiar. Sometimes she just starts singing. Sometimes she waits to find a hymnbook.

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