We can no longer be in denial: Summer is over. The calendar says so. As with most transitions, this will be met with a variety of responses. This transition has already been happening in sports. Major League Baseball is winding down its season and football, from youth to the NFL, is well underway. Sweaters and hoodies are coming out of closets. Pumpkin spice anything can be had. 

The past few weeks have seen transitions within our household. Two family members have moved to different settings. 

I have an aunt that was staying with us part of the summer. She lived in an assisted living apartment in Illinois until she could no longer stay there. She has Alzheimer’s disease and it has been progressing these past months. 

Alzheimer’s, like cancer, is a diagnosis that sends shivers down one’s spine. It is an insidious disease that steals life and memory. The medical field has barely scratched the surface of causes and treatment options. 

Few, if any, people and families have not been touched by a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia. We work to understand and support our loved ones as they live with this disease. We know the dire predicament they are in, where their minds and bodies betray themselves. 

As we have been on this journey, various medicines, therapies or activities have been explored to slow down the progression of the disease. These are places where we exert some modicum of control and choice. This is where caregivers and loved ones work out possible solutions and look for signs to measure the intervention’s outcome. 

That is the “head” part, the logical part. Then there is also the “heart” part. And that is the hard part. Because this is my aunt! This disease is taking her away from us and herself. It is a lot of things, but mostly it is heartbreaking. 

The other family member in transition is our daughter who began her freshman year at college. We unloaded her stuff into her dorm room and left as she began a new journey. We hope and trust it is a journey that we, the community, the school and the church have prepared her for. For her, this time of transition is one of learning and experiencing and discerning what the future may hold. For her mother and me, it is a time of missing and adjustment, but with a sense of accomplishment. 

The prayer of trusting in God’s presence during the “changes and chances of life” rings true. We experience those changes whether they are sweet or bitter or a mixture of both. We also trust in God’s never failing love which sustains us through all of the changes in life. 

— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. John Tabaka is pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Monroe.