Meredith (left) and me last night in the gardens

WHEN I was a newspaper reporter in my twenties, I worked in an office in the Pennsylvania suburbs with another young woman named Meredith.

Meredith was bright, pretty and she was small like me. She was a hard worker and ambitious.

Eventually, I moved to another office and Meredith took a job at another newspaper in North Jersey. We both married and had children. We both left journalism, but while I stayed home, Meredith pursued a new career as a clinical psychologist.

She became very successful in her career. She joined a busy group practice in an affluent area and had many clients. They came to her for advice about all kinds of things. She would sometimes tell me about her conversations with them, without revealing identities. People in this world often have no one to turn to for comfort, advice or wisdom. When once they might have gone to the woman next door, sitting at the kitchen table, or a priest now they pay fantastic sums to go to psychologists.

One of her clients was a woman who had tragically lost a young child in a car accident. Meredith helped her adjust to driving again. She seemed to have many clients with difficulty handling their children. Once she had a boy who was about 11 and who could not adjust to returning home from school to an empty house every day. He was eventually given some kind of hypnosis to help him cope. Once a young couple came to her and asked her if it was okay if they didn’t have any children.

Meredith’s clients were smart and hard-working. They were good people in many ways — but often seemed, judging from what she said, to have little common sense. They would rather think their children had psychological diseases with impressive, pseudo-scientific names invented just a few years ago than that they struggled from a lack of discipline or needed siblings or were created for higher things. They would give their children prescription drugs but no plausible answer to human suffering. Their children suffered and they themselves suffered, like all human beings, but they didn’t know why.

Meredith made lots of money at her career. We lived different lives and our views on many things diverged, but we remained friends. She came from an Irish, formerly Catholic family, married a Jewish man and practiced no faith. Our friendship, though more superficial with the years, transcended political and religious differences. Once we were chatting and somehow the subject of the afterlife came up. Meredith said, “I think we become nothing after we die.” She said it in a cold, hard and dismissive way. Discussion closed. She had a tough, tough side. Her house was spotless, beautifully decorated and organized to the max.

Her busy practice continued to grow. It did, that is, until a few years ago when she suddenly became inept at using her computer and remembering things. The people in her office noticed a difference in her, and told her husband that something was seriously wrong. She went to a doctor and, at the age of 57, Meredith was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

But unlike the diseases her clients supposedly had, this was real, all too real. Today, she cannot work or drive or cook or clean her house or pay her own bills. She cannot cut her own food and often needs assistance in the bathroom. She has difficulty sustaining a conversation and the topics she is able to handle are extremely limited.

Ever since she stopped working, we have spent more time together. I take her for walks in the woods, and out for coffee. She especially enjoys the walks, and is good at hiking, though usually she walks behind me to orient herself. We walk single file through the woods. “Are you okay back there?” I say. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she responds.

Last night, I took her to see the famous Christmas lights and displays at Longwood Gardens, one of the most beautiful gardens in the world.

But a terrible thing happened. In the dense, dizzying crowds, I lost Meredith.

We approached the ticket desk, and Meredith was slightly behind me. I had not made reservations in advance and I was anxious about getting in, so I was absorbed in talking to the woman at the desk. I spent a few minutes there, got the tickets and when I turned around — Meredith was gone. I mean she was really gone.

I quickly looked all through the lobby, the gift shop, the restrooms, the video-screening room. She was nowhere. I went back to the ticket woman and said, “Did you see a woman standing behind me when we spoke?” I was hoping she had noticed in what direction Meredith headed. No, she hadn’t. I once again looked all through the lobby filled with crowds.

Okay, then I became frantic. “I’ve lost her!” I said to the woman, explaining the situation. She ordered someone else to take her place, called security and an all-points bulletin was put out for Meredith through the acres and acres of woods and meadows and Italian water fountains, all spectacularly lit up.

The ticket woman went into the gift shop and then came back. “I think I saw her,” she said. She took me into the shop and pointed to a woman in a fluffy hat. She was about 80 years old. I said, “No, no, no. Meredith is much younger than that.”

Then I became more frantic. I was afraid she had headed out the door to the dark parking lots. “I’m going back to where we were parked and see if she is there,” I said to a security guard. He said, “No, you have to stay here in case she comes back. Everyone out there has gotten the message.”

I thought selfishly of what her family would think of me. If she was wandering out there for long and could not be found, I would … what would I do? I started to tear up, partly for myself and partly for her.

I went again all through the crowded rooms of the building. I wanted to call the police and ambulances and the fire company. I wanted helicopters and search planes and sniffing dogs. I wanted the thousands of people rambling through the gardens to stop what they were doing and look. Would that be too much to ask?

And then I saw her.

She was moving, carried along by a wave of people, from the entrance to the main gardens toward the ticket counter. She did not look at all afraid. I ran up to her, took her in my arms and cried. “Meredith, we found you!” She was oblivious to having been lost. She just laughed in a vacant way. I didn’t ask her where she had been. It was surely too complicated and didn’t matter anyway. We went to see the lights and poinsettias, the trees and the stars, the Christmas lilies and fountains. I held her by the arm as we walked.

Sometimes when we are out together, Meredith for no apparent reason begins to cry gently. I think I know why. She is confused about being confused. She began to cry as we headed back to the parking lot later.

“Do you know if you tell God you love Him, He will love you back?” I said.

“Okay,” she said, sniffling.

“Do you know that you are better now in some ways than when you were normal?”

It’s true, she has lost her outer shell. She is no longer the tough, ambitious and incredibly well-organized woman with a long list of psychological diagnoses to dispense. She’s forgotten most of the syndromes in the Diagnostic Manual which she once wielded with such proficiency. And in response to the little things I do for her, she responds generously and tenderly with the love of a trusting child. I am deeply rewarded.

Once when I was helping her wash her hands in the bathroom, she turned to me and said so directly and in such a penetrating way, “I love you. I love you so much.”

Now more than ever, there is nothing important Meredith can’t do.

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