“She is so intense,” said the dean, elongating so with a distinct Minnesotan flair. “And it’s only getting worse.”

We were debriefing in the cafeteria over slabs of chicken cordon bleu. I’d just finished my appointment with the Sister, and needed to verify the data I’d collected with a reliable proxy.

“Does she have a formal diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or dementia?” I asked.

“No diagnosis, but she’s lived in memory care for several years. She thinks she’s in charge there.” I laughed, but saw sobriety in the dean’s aged face. “She goes around checking everyone’s pulses.”

I was at this facility to collect follow-up data for the Sister’s twentieth cycle in a longitudinal memory study. The goal was to observe—through neuropsychological testing—how participants’ cognition declines or stays the same over time. The data was supplemented by health, mood, and lifestyle interviews, each covering different variables that may or may not inform cognitive aging.

When she enrolled in the study, the Sister was a healthy Catholic nun, probably semi-retired from her nursing ministry. Now, she was nearing deafness and didn’t know what year it was. Since the early 1990s, the research had been asking why some older adults stave off cognitive impairment and why others fall victim to it. The Sister had clearly landed in the latter bracket.

“What’s your name?” she’d asked me, clutching her walker as she strolled into the arts and crafts room in which our appointment was being held. She wore a gold crucifix around her neck.

“I’m Zachary,” I said.

“Zachary! An Old Testament name. That’s a nice haircut you’ve got.”

“Oh, thank you, Sister!”

“And look at those boots you’re wearing. Wow!”

“Thank you, Sister. I just bought them at the Mall of America yesterday.”

“Wow! I’m very proud to be a part of this study.”

“Can you believe this is your twentieth year participating?”

“Wow! And what’s your name?”

“Zachary.”

“That’s an Old Testament name! You got a nice haircut.”

We repeated different iterations of this conversation on and off over the course of two hours. I’d been a bit nervous prior to her arrival, reviewing notes from previous years and learning how she’d admonished staff members who’d collected high blood pressure readings from her. But I couldn’t picture this sort of reaction now, as she showered me with compliments about my clothes, my perfect volume, and of course, my haircut—short on the back and sides but swooped up in the front.

When I asked if she experienced any head injuries or chest pain in the past year, she grabbed each part of her body and closed her eyes, going somewhere deep and unknown to find the answer. I asked if she had trouble remembering things and she said never. Were people unfriendly? Did she ever come into conflict with others? Nope, everyone was so nice. I took her blood pressure and she pumped her fist like a football coach when it landed in a perfect range. When it was time for us to part ways, she grabbed my hands and prayed the Hail Mary over me.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for…” she looked me in the eyes, fighting hard for unprompted recollection. “Zachary! Now and always. Amen.” There was something indelible about her spirit. She was flattering and joyful. I’d encountered plenty of impaired participants before, but none whom I could laugh with, none who complimented my outfit from head to toe, none who embodied such gratitude and enthusiasm. We ended the appointment with a hug.

“Wait, let me show you where the washroom is. In case you need it,” she said, leading me out of the craft room.

“Where you headed?” a passing nun asked. The Sister ignored her. “Here, I can…”

“No! I’m showing him!” the Sister screamed. And there it was: the flash of ire that passes through, the temperamental defensiveness that can often accompany cognitive decline. I smiled at the other nun in an attempt to de-escalate; she walked away with an eye roll.

“Here’s the washroom,” the Sister said, extending a Vanna White hand and flashing her dentures in a smile. “In case you need it.”

A nursing assistant showed up to escort the Sister back to memory care, a home she inhabited with no understanding, where she’d soon forget everything that just happened, and more.

I drove the rental car out of the parking lot. I’d initially been eager to explore this part of central Minnesota, wanting to check out some of the true crime sites I was privy to from various podcasts and TV shows. But early November had brought freezing temperatures to the area, even colder than the Halloween snowstorm we’d just experienced at home in Chicago. Instead, I ate a solo dinner at Texas Roadhouse and went back to my hotel, dipping my feet in the hot tub and opening Grindr. I engaged with the faceless profiles, wondering what the Catholic nuns would think of this “behavior.” After a while, I closed the app and went up to my room, burrowing myself in the king bed.

I thought of my grandmother, as I often did after a day like this. I thought of how much joy and laughter the Sister had brought me, and how nothing about Memaw’s disease was ever funny. Over the course of fifteen years, there was never an If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry sentiment amongst my family—we just cried. We cried as she forgot us, we cried when she fell and couldn’t get up, and we cried through those final years as she sat catatonic, wearing diapers and living off a feeding tube. Maybe I laughed now because of how confident the Sister was, checking pulses and reprimanding her fellow nuns like she ran the place. Where Memaw was confused and fearful, the Sister was unbothered and free of inhibition. And with a lifelong vow of celibacy, who was really suffering in the wake of her disease? No spouse, children, or grandchildren were losing their hearts as she lost her mind.

I showed up at the convent’s campus early the next morning, mindful of how the snowy conditions would affect traffic. I sat in the craft room, cleaning up my data forms from the previous day. The dean stopped in the doorway.

“You’ll never guess what she did last night.”

“What happened?” I asked, alarmed.

“I still don’t know where she got the scissors, but she gave herself a haircut.”

My jaw dropped. The Sister’s hair was already a short, conservative pixie. I could barely imagine the result.

“The bangs are just terrible,” the dean said, and then it came to me: my haircut, the one she’d loved so much, with the swoop that she’d so openly admired. At some point, late into the evening hours, she’d remembered what she’d seen, and tried to replicate it. The news was troubling. The outcome seemed gruesome. But she remembered.

I started to laugh, in a way that was almost unprofessional, but the dean laughed with me.

“God bless her,” she said.

Share This: