The Father: When Memory Fails (Psalm 71:9)

The Father places us inside Anthony's dementia. Apartments shift. Faces change. Time folds. We experience his confusion not as observers but as participants—is this his flat or Anne's? Is that woman his daughter or a stranger? The psalmist cries, Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone. Anthony's greatest terror is not death but dissolution—losing the very self that fears losing. Yet even as his identity fragments, something remains: the child calling for his mother, the fundamental need to be known and held. Identity in Scripture is not built on memory but on being remembered by God. I have called you by name; you are mine. When Anthony can no longer remember who he is, he is still remembered.