The Last Lucid Moment on Maple Street

For eleven years, Dorothy Ainsworth bathed her husband, tied his shoes, and answered the same question — "Do I know you?" — sometimes forty times a day. Harold had been a high school history teacher in Cedar Rapids who could once recite every president in order. Alzheimer's stole the presidents first, then the names of their three children, and finally Dorothy herself.

But on a Tuesday morning in March, she walked into his room at Mercy Ridge Care Center and Harold looked up from his wheelchair with clear, focused eyes. "Dot," he whispered. "There you are." He reached for her hand. For ninety seconds, he was fully himself — her Harold — before the fog rolled back in. He died four days later.

Dorothy told her pastor she kept replaying those ninety seconds because they felt like a window into something bigger than medicine could explain. A glimpse of restoration. A preview of what wholeness might look like when it finally arrives and never leaves.

That is the promise John saw from Patmos. Not ninety seconds of clarity but an eternal morning where the Almighty wipes every tear, where death and disease release their grip for good, where every stolen name and lost memory is handed back whole. "Behold," God declares, "I am making all things new." Not patching. Not managing. Making new — the way Harold's eyes found Dorothy one last time, except forever, and for all of us.