The following prayer was written nearly six years ago when my mother was hospitalized. She was eventually discharged, but then died later that year.
I share it today because I know so many people are now caring for their own elderly family members. I want to encourage those of you who are in that position to use those quiet bedside moments to talk to God. Offer your thoughts, your observations, your concerns and your memories to Him — maybe in gratitude or maybe as a way of reconciling. The single most important thing that got me through those days was prayer.
O Great Physician —
You love the hoary head, including my mother’s silver waves, now matted from too much time on the pillow.
As I sit beside my mother’s bed and study her lined face, I watch each breath pass through her lips with an effort she did not used to exert. Occasionally, her weary eyes open, but, Lord, she doesn’t even know me!
Heavenly Father, cradle her. She worked hard in this life, raising five children, supporting her husband, preparing meal after meal for family, friends, and strangers, using her nursing skills to give hope to others, using her tragedies to encourage those who encounter the same.
Let her know the rest that only You can give.
While I sit here don’t mind me. I’ll just hold her hand and weep a little. I’m content to wipe her face, give her sips of water, and wait.
Many persons live their entire lives without ever seeing a human being die.
Howard Thurman, “Life Must Be Experienced” in The Inward Journey
My father caring for my mother in her last days
At the time, I didn’t realize what a privilege it was to sit with my mother and then my father as they passed from one life into the next.
In some ways, it felt like an awfulness. Especially with my mother, with that gurgle of excess fluid that the nurse would suction out to make her more comfortable. It’s a sound I won’t forget.
And I prayed in my mother’s last few days conflicting prayers of “Please, Lord, let her live until my sister gets here” and “Please, Lord, relieve this terrible suffering.”
She lived until my sister arrived. We were all gathered around my mother’s bed in the hospital — her living children and my father — as she died.
My father went more quickly. One day he was up, dressing himself, coming out breakfast. Before the end of the day, my children had to help him back to bed. The next day he didn’t get out of it and he died that evening.
My brothers were there. One sister-in-law. One nephew. Most of my children. His home health aide. My sister had not yet arrived. My brother played a song on a CD for him as he passed.
My sister got there in the wee hours of the morning and went to see him as he was laid out in his bed. The hospice nurse who had prepared the body had clasped my father’s hands across his abdomen and it looked so unnatural. He looked so dead, and I wished with all my heart that my sister could have seen him alive one last time. We had Face-timed with her in the afternoon, but it’s not the same.
These days, the stories that come out of the hospitals impacted with COVID are awful — the shortages of rooms, equipment, and personnel. The makeshift morgues. The isolation.
I wept one day in the car listening on the radio to a nurse describe staying over and over after her shift had ended to sit with a dying patient because she didn’t want anyone to die alone. How many patients had she done that with? I don’t remember — but it was many.
And I realized the great privilege I had — to sit with my parents in a non-COVID world and tell them I loved them one last time.
My sister, my father, and me Taken on Father’s Day 2012 at Jerry’s Place
The other morning, when I was praying for my sister during my quiet time, I thought about the text she had recently sent.
“Heat index of 113. No wonder I’m dripping.”
She lives in Florida. Heat index must be like the wind chill — one of those weather statistics you look at and groan. I have no idea of what the heat index has ever been in Cooperstown.
Anyway, I was praying for my sister, and the heat in Florida, and thought, The good thing is that she doesn’t have to go outside and she has air conditioning.
I stopped myself. She DOES have to go outside. She recently got a dog, and a young active dog at that.
Oh, the things we do when we are responsible for another living being! Dog owners must take their dogs out in all kinds of weather. Cat owners scoop kitty litter. New parents get up in the middle of the night. Parents of older kids make that awful trip to the Emergency Room for one reason or another.
I remember the first time the parent-child paradigm shifted with my father. I was staying with my parents off and on over the summer probably 10 or 11 years ago because some of my kids had jobs in Cooperstown. In the middle of one night, I heard my father heading down the hall to use the bathroom. I was only half-awake until I heard the thud of his body hitting the floor. I ran to find him collapsed in the hallway and unresponsive.
One of my kids called 9-1-1 for me and watched for the ambulance to arrive, while I tended to my father. As he came around, I told him to lie still and that we had called the ambulance. He was distressed, though, not because he had passed out but because he had wet himself.
“I need you to get me some dry clothes,” he said.
I ran down the hall to his room where my mother slept through this whole thing, grabbed some clean clothes, and ran back to him lying on the hall floor. While children slept in nearby rooms and another child waited at the front door for the EMTs, I helped him slide off the wet articles of clothing. I cleaned him with a washcloth, and then helped slide the clean clothes on. The whole time, he kept saying, “I’m so sorry. This is terrible. You shouldn’t have to do this. I’m so sorry.”
His dignity was important to him so I made sure he arrived at the Emergency Room clean. I never said a word about it to him, or anyone else for that matter.
Andrew Peterson, in his book Adorning the Dark, tells the story of a woman asking him to write a bit of song-writing advice for her when he was signing a CD. “Don’t write bad songs,” he wrote. She then took the CD to one of the other musicians who performed on it and asked him to write his advice. He saw what Andrew had written and wrote, “Write the bad ones, too.”
I was thinking about that the other day when I shared one of my hair-brained ideas with some friends. They gently pointed out the flaw in the idea, and I felt bad, but only for a moment. Because my heart was saying, “Don’t share dumb ideas” but God was whispering, “Share the dumb ones, too.”
It’s so easy to be crippled by the bad, whatever shape that may take — a bad song, a bad idea, a bad moment in time.
With that bad moment, it’s important to remember them. Not to dwell on them, but to remember.
Remember the time you walked the dog in 103 degree weather.
Remember the trip to the ER.
Remember sharing bad advice or a dumb idea.
Some day, you’ll be able to use that precise moment to encourage someone else.
Some day, you’ll remember how much you loved that somebody and doing that thing wasn’t a chore but an expression of love.
Blessed are the Painters of pictures for their work brings joy to others.
Philip water-colored a picture.
Owen water-colored himself.
Two artists
Blessed are the Painters of chicken coops for they beautify the world, or at least a tiny piece of it.
1989?
2019 — a work in progress
Blessed are the Preservers of thePast; blessed are those who Push for Progress;
In a sidewalk in Boston — “Friend – Look up and see the North Church Tower … This view preserved for all future generations…”
View of the North Church Tower
And blessed is the balance between the two.
I recently went to Boston with my daughter, Mary. We walked the Freedom Trail from Faneuil Hall to the Massachusetts State House. Along the way, we saw the large medallion pictured above, telling us to “Look up and see the North Church Tower.”
“One if by land and two if by sea…” My mother could recite Paul Revere’s Ride well into her dementia. Earlier that day, I had attended worship at the old North Church, where the usher let me into my own private box. I read the sign on wall there that told of Charles Wesley preaching there. I was in awe.
But I could barely see the North Church from the site of medallion. Oh, it’s there. It’s spire rises above whatever that blue-green thing is.
Boston is a city that works hard to preserve the past.
It’s a balancing act, though.
For instance, the Old Corner Bookstore, built in 1716, is now a Chipotle restaurant. Mary bemoaned its fate. On the other hand, I pointed out to her that the building was going to be demolished in 1960 and turned into a parking lot, but investors purchased it and revitalized it. It’s still standing.
Preservation versus progress.
Both are necessary.
Blessed are the Perseverators.
I can’t remember exactly what my father was doing at the time, but I remember Helen telling me that he was perseverating. It was a new word for me,
but certainly not a new concept.
The repetition that goes with dementia, or autism, or brain injury may be all too familiar to some of us.
Lately my father has been perseverating over church. Our conversations go like this:
Dad: So are you going to take me to church?
Me: No, Dad. Today is (fill in the weekday). You go to church on Sunday.
Dad: Why?
Me: Because that’s when they have worship services. If we went there right now, nobody would be there. You go on Sunday.
Dad: Ok. (short pause) Are you going to take me to church now?
Me: No, Dad. Today is (fill in the weekday). You go to church on Sunday.
And so on.
He wants to go to church, and I remind myself what a blessing that is. He perseverates over a positive.
Blessed are those who Persevere.
I admit that I get frustrated with the perseverating.
It happens all day.
It happens all night.
I’m getting tired.
Yesterday I had to re-certify my lifeguarding. For the first time, the pre-test — a 300 yard swim followed by a timed brick retrieval — was daunting.
I knew I could do it, but my body wasn’t so sure.
Had I thought of it, I could have sung the Dorie song — “Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…”
Instead, I did the Little Engine That Could — “I think I can, I think I can,” and slowly, slowly I completed the swim. (Okay, well, not too slowly. I swam it well within the allotted time.)
Perseverance sometimes requires a series of inner pep talks.
Each time I had to climb out of the pool at the wall, I had to remind myself that I could do it.
Each time I start feeling frustrated with the perseverating, I also have to remind myself that I can do this.
I can.
I can.
I love this man and I can answer the same question 257 times.
In one day.
Blessed are those who persevere, who run the race with endurance, who finish the swim test, who live with perseverators, for they shall hear, “Well done.”
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with my hands clenched and guarding my heart. I’m sure it’s stress, but it doesn’t change the little exercise I go through — opening my hands wide and spreading my fingers, willing them to stay open while I fall back asleep.
Open hands feel vulnerable. I have to be very intentional about it.
My son Sam went to British Columbia for school and adventure. Adventures like climbing sheer rock faces.
I had to ask him to stop sending photographs. I could handle ones like this:
But not ones like this:
Once he called me and said, “Mom! The coolest thing happened this weekend while I was climbing!”
“What?” I asked, thinking it would be a wildlife sighting or a beautiful vista.
“”I fell!!” he said.
My heart stopped. I felt my stomach squeeze.
“It was so cool!” he continued. “The rope caught me!”
“Don’t tell me stories like that,” I said.
Really. I can’t handle them.
But while Sam was out there, I learned to pray with open hands. I could do nothing to change what would happen — just pray.
And let go.
It felt very vulnerable.
I emptied a drawer in my mother’s dresser a month or so ago.
It was still filled with her things and the smell of my mother overwhelmed me when I pulled the drawer open. I don’t know that I can accurately describe what that smell is. Powder? Tussy deodorant? Sachets? Tissue?
I pressed my lips into a grim line and dumped the contents of the drawer into a large tote.
Then I did the same with another drawer.
And another.
Nearly four years after my mother died, I finally emptied her dresser.
When my sister came to visit, I pulled the tote downstairs for her to sort through.
Letting go of my mother’s things felt vulnerable. But right.
I’m worrier by nature.
And a breath-holder in stressful situations.
I don’t like change.
My tendency is to hold on.
Tight.
But…
Blessed are those with open hands, for they shall know peace.
My father’s music of choice is Scottish — so I hear it all the time. A thread of homesickness runs through their music.
The other day, as I listened for 793rd time to John McDermott singing, My Ain Folk, I found myself thinking about how blessed I am that I understand this song and this homesickness. Now that I have traveled a wee bit, I know even more what it is to long to be home.
The fjords of Norway are breathtaking, Sarajevo is hauntingly beautiful, the beaches of Normandy are sad and inspiring — but whenever and wherever I travel, I miss my home.
I love Cooperstown —- have I ever mentioned that here?
I rewrote My Ain Folk (see the video at the end if you aren’t familiar with the song) for my own family —
Far from my hame I wander but still my thoughts return
To my ain1 folk over yonder — and it’s for them yearn
I see the tree-lined streets there, and I look out o’er the lake
At the Tower2 and the Lion3, and my heart begins to ache
And it’s – Oh, but I’m longing for my ain folk
Though they be but quiet simple4 plain folk
When I’m far away from home — wherever I may roam
I’m missing Cooperstown and my ain folk
Recalling Mom there in the kitchen5, my father in his den6
My husband in the pasture7, mowing it again
My children coming through the door, excited ‘bout their day
The cashier at the grocery8 who talks of family while I pay
And it’s – Oh, but I’m longing for my ain folk
Though they be but quiet simple plain folk
When I’m far away from home — wherever I may roam
I’m missing Cooperstown and my ain folk
1. Ain = own
2. Tower = Kingfisher Tower
3. Lion = the Sleeping Lion a “mountain” at the end of the lake. You have to squint and use a lot of imagination to see a lion, but that’s what it’s called.
at the edge of Otsego Lake looking toward the Sleeping Lion and Kingfisher Tower
4. Simple = in the sense of enjoying simple pleasures: the dew on the grass, the hummingbirds diving in and out of the bee balm, the colors of the maples in autumn, the sparkle of snow
5. Mom in the kitchen = it’s where I remember her most
Marmalade
6. Dad in the den = okay, so my father doesn’t have a den per say, but he loves to read and work on puzzles. If he had a den, he’d sit there.
A dictionary (and a cat) in the lap
7. Bud in the pasture = I don’t think he has missed working as a dosimetrist one whit. He has worked hard on the property here — mowing and clearing brush — so that it’s beautiful just to look out the front door.
8. Cashier at the grocery = I really love that she knows my name. Her name is Linda. And the produce guy is Mark. And the deli lady — I wish I knew her name — always brightens up and greets me when I stop there. It’s a small town thing, I suppose, to know the people at the grocery store so well.
Yes, yes — blessed are those who know homesickness because they also know home.
It has been three and a half years since my mother passed away.
A few weeks ago my father wanted to visit my mother’s grave. In the first year after she passed, I had tried several times to get him to go.
His way of dealing with grief was avoidance.
I would ask him if he wanted to bring flowers to her grave. He wouldn’t hear me.
I would ask again. He would change the subject.
I would ask again. No response.
On the first anniversary of her death, I bought a small pot of pansies and asked Bud to drop my father and I at the cemetery before church. Slowly we started down the path, but when it came time to turn towards the Columbarium, my father picked up his pace and headed straight for the church.
Alone I set the flowers I had bought for her at the base of the Columbarium,
The Columbarium
Blessed are those who grieve.
Jesus said, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
The difference between grieving and mourning is this: grief is private, but mourning is the outward expression of grief that allows a person to move forward.
Grief is the emotional reaction to a loss, while mourning is learning to live again.
Grief muddles the mind, but mourning begins to put things back in place.
Grief is the raw emotions that say things will never be right again.
Mourning reflects on what was and what will never be again, and then works to deal with that void.
About a month ago, my father asked to bring flowers to my mother’s grave.
“Can I see where she’s buried?” he asked.
He didn’t remember ever going there before, so I showed him pictures from her interment.
The avoidance had finally passed. He was ready.
I purchased a bouquet and tied an orange ribbon on it. My mother always liked orange.
We drove to town and I parked as close as I could to the Columbarium. He picked his way along the dirt and gravel path that led there, struggling with his walker, while I struggled to hold the bouquet and keep my arm supporting him.
Silently we stood before the gray granite corner of the Columbarium.
“Is this it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, and showed him my mother’s name carved in the granite.
He wept.
“Can you take a picture of it?”
I did.
Blessed are those who grieve, for they have loved deeply.
And blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the advocates
and the whistle-blowers
for their shaky-kneed courage.
They shall hear the words,
“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
A week or two ago, a friend posted an urgent prayer request. She had reported an abusive situation and was summoned to a meeting with the higher-ups of the organization.
She had posted her prayer request the previous night but I didn’t see it until early in the morning. I had just finished my prayer and reading time so the Beatitudes were fresh in my mind.
I prayed for my friend, and for the abused and the abuser, for the meeting. I felt overwhelmed with emotion for what she had ahead of her that day.
In a comment to her post letting her know that I was praying, I wrote the beatitude above. I knew that if I was in that situation I would need to be reminded why I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s so much easier not to stick your neck out.
But God calls us to care for the least of these and to advocate for the person who can’t advocate for themself.
I’m sure He will someday say to her, “Well done.”
Both the young and the old — and even some in between — need advocates.
This morning I received a notification — “You have a new memory.” I laugh at those notifications. They seem so silly.
New memories — pshaw. Memories are, by their very nature, sort of oldish.
This morning, though, I paused to look at my “new” memory.
Two years ago today, I was in Normandy.
Two years ago today, I first heard the story of British gliders landing in Normandy to take the Pegasus Bridge — gliders whose pilots used stopwatches and compasses to navigate, some landing a mere 47 yards from their objective. I’m still amazed at that feat.
Two years ago today, I stood in the Canadian cemetery in Normandy, France, and grieved for those young men whose names were carved in the stones there. So brave. So young. But such a beautiful place.
Five years ago today, I was watching Karl play tennis. He and his partner, Michael, were killing it.
Five years ago today, at about the same time, 1400 miles away, my first grandson was born.
I didn’t need a photo app on my phone or Facebook to remind me of that memory. I woke up thinking of him. (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HENRY!!)
On the other hand, my father needed the memory prompts.
“Remember our trip to Normandy,” I asked him.
“When was that?” he replied.
“Two years ago today we went on our first tour.”
I handed him the photo book and memorabilia I had put together from that trip.
His eyes grew misty as he leafed through it all. He carefully unfolded the maps of the cemeteries and of Paris, studied them, and then folded and placed them back in the pocket of the book. I couldn’t tell if he remembered or not.
“That was a good trip,” he said.
It was a good trip.
As we travel down this other road of forgetting who, what, and how, I often think, We’ll always have Normandy (and Paris, I suppose).
