Hidden in the Hollow of His Blessed Hand

pondering what happens to the minds of Christians with Alzheimer's, particularly my dad's.

Where is a lost mind to be found?
Is there some cleft where the sum of a man’s thoughts
are hid away safe and sound?
Who knows where the mind of a man has flown?
He is as a lone vessel hemmed by mist,
no direction known.

Psychologists hang their heads bemused.
Philosophers must themselves recuse.
The breadth of human wisdom knows not where,
nor how to look, nor does it care.

No currency to trade for such a thing,
its finding cannot be bought with all
the treasures that this world could bring.
No gold, nor silver, crystal, coral, glass,
gems of topaz, onyx, sapphire.
No mighty deeds that last,
nor all the ceaseless tide
of things to which young men aspire
could such knowledge acquire.

I only know that as a mind departs, it says goodbye
a bitter hard farewell, made sweet somehow
by the intervening years, a well
of fading memories, the longing of the heart now
for a shred of whatever used to be.

But the former glory cannot be compared with that to come,
for man is going to his eternal home.
“The dust returns to the earth as it was,”
with all that a man knows and is and does.

But where shall his lost thoughts be found?
Is there some hollow where his mind is hidden,
preserved safe and sound,
hid even from death itself?

There is One who knows its hiding place.
To us, it’s as though a man’s mind sailed away one day
on a slow voyage bound for far-flung shores,
to which we do not know the way. 

But God knows where its harbor lies,
nearer than we could guess;
for He who collects all our tears in a bottle 
so that none are lost
gathers all a man is in the hollow
shell of His hand,
clasped close to His chest.

And when the heavens and earth are new again
with all His children gathered together to Him,
our God in whom all treasures
of wisdom and knowledge are hidden
shall open once more His chest of precious things,
and remove and return that which was lost,
so that a man made to bear such a cross
may wonder again and whistle and speak and sing.

P.S., my dad was a pastor, sang in church choir, wondered at the manifold beauty of God and His creation, and was an avid whistler. Each of these things ebbed away in turn because of the disease. But each will one day come back to him, as the last line's contour suggests:
first the glory of it all, then melody to undergird it, then words to speak of it, and finally a voice to crown it all in doxology once again and forever.
As Isa 35:6 says, "the tongue of the mute [shall] sing for joy."

P.P.S., if you detected the fragrance of Job 28 in this poem, that was deliberate.