When It All Comes Down to What Matters Most
How naively the toddler says,
“I can’t wait to be older.”
My mother was lucid for all of her eighty-three years. But near the end of her life, heavy-duty pain medication coupled with her limping heart brought moments of distress that exacerbated her anxiety and lifelong selective impatience. During her years as a nurse, she’d built a reputation for endless patience with her patients. We siblings mused that she must have spent her reserves of the grace, which left little of it for things like slow-moving trains, sluggish Internet connections, and God’s timetable for her final breath.
Dependent upon those of us who lived close to her after Dad’s premature death at sixty-four—right on time in God’s eyes, no doubt, but premature to our way of thinking—Mom let the impatient side of herself slip out in observations about how often we should call or visit, how soon to flip on our turn signal when driving her to or from a doctor’s appointment, and how inconvenient it was that the server at the Asian restaurant spoke her native language clearly, but only halting English.
Pain can intensify the smallest character quirk or flaw. We see it happening when we’re down with the flu. Why would we be surprised to see it magnified when the pain is a deep emotional wound or the crushing pain that sometimes accompanies end-of-life illnesses for an aging parent?
As my mom neared her final days, she grew agitated about her Bible. When I walked into her room at the hospice residence facility one afternoon, her eyes showed her frustration: “Need to read it. I can’t read it. Help me.” She repeated, “Seventy-one. Seventy-one. Seventy-one.”
My impulse was to remind her she’d passed seventy-one a dozen years earlier but then realized she was talking about a chapter or a verse or both. “What book of the Bible, Mom? I’ll find it for you.”
“Is it ninety-one? Ninety-one,” she said, wringing scary-thin hands that had once been plump and strong.
I’d seen this dramatic level of agitation a few times since she’d grown too weak to hold a hairbrush or dress herself. It threatened my own beating heart’s rhythm. My precious mother, a rock of stability with a little stubborn mixed in, helpless and frightened and desperate for something she couldn’t define.
“In the Psalms, Mom?”
I started with Psalm 91, skimming first, noting truths that would comfort both of us in the room. Lines like, “Living in the Most High’s shelter, camping in the Almighty’s shade, I say to the Lord, ‘You are my refuge, my stronghold! You are my God—the one I trust’ ” (Psalm 91:1–2 CEB) and “God will protect you with his pinions; you’ll find refuge under his wings. His faithfulness is a protective shield” (verse 4). And “Don’t be afraid of terrors at night, arrows that fly in daylight, or sickness that prowls in the dark, destruction that ravages at noontime” (verses 5–6).
She shook her head as violently as her almost-nonexistent energy would allow. “No, no, no.”
What had I missed? Why wasn’t her soul appeased by these ancient yet ever-new promises? I flipped back a few pages to Psalm 71, leaving the 91 her thoughts had eventually landed on.
I held her hand as I read the first few verses. They sounded a lot like a repeat of God’s promises to those in a place of deep need—“Be my rock of refuge where I can always escape,” (Psalm 71:3 CEB). Then my eyes caught up with her heart when I read verse nine: “Don’t cast me off in old age. Don’t abandon me when my strength is used up!” The words on the page blurred as I continued reading to the one who had first read stories to me.
But me? I will hope. Always. . . . Lord, I will help others remember nothing but your righteous deeds. You’ve taught me since my youth, God, and I’m still proclaiming your wondrous deeds! So, even in my old age with gray hair, don’t abandon me, God! Not until I tell generations about your mighty arm, tell all who are yet to come about your strength, and about your ultimate righteousness, God. . . . You, who have shown me many troubles and calamities, will revive me once more (Psalm 71:14, 16–20 CEB).
The tension abated. My mom’s soul—and mine—had cried out for reassurance that the valley of the shadow did not stretch into eternity. It had an end point. And in the meantime, the in-between time? She and I would cling to the Word that replaced agitation and impatience with peace.
Monica says, “I’m blessed because at almost fifty-eight years old, I still have both of my parents and they are able to remain at home. It is difficult to watch them slow down and [experience] all the other things that go with aging. But the most difficult thing is knowing I won’t always have them in this life. That, someday, their chairs at the kitchen table will be empty.”
Empty chairs.
Fodder for still-life artists, photographers, and book-cover designers. But for those with aging parents, an empty chair represents a stark relationship end point. Navigating toward that end point—whether it is too near or far in the distance—can’t help but nudge us toward life’s large and looming questions. Among them is this: “As my parents age, what matters most?”
How would you answer that? Does your thought follow one of these paths?
•It’s time to iron out that wrinkle in our relationship. It’s not worth holding on to that grudge in light of what lies ahead.
•We need to have the hard talks. Who will serve as their power of attorney or financial power of attorney? Are their wills up-to-date so their wishes will be clearly known? Do they have living wills for medical intervention? What are their thoughts now compared to when they were my age?
•How will my daily routine need to change to accommodate my parents’ care?
•Are they spiritually and emotionally ready for that eventual end point? Am I?
Take a few moments now—the elusive “later” grows more elusive as time passes—to consider how you and your parents would answer the question, “At this season of life, what matters most to us as individuals and as a family?” And then spend another moment considering and praying over this verse, underlined in the pages of my mother’s Bible: “Don’t cast me off in old age. Don’t abandon me when my strength is used up!” Psalm 71:9 (CEB).
Great God of comfort,
Inventor of faithfulness,
You who breathed our first breath for us
And will kiss away the last,
Steady us.
Strengthen us.
Surprise us
With old truths
Lit from within
By Your Spirit
As we embark on a journey
We didn’t know we’d signed up for—
Watching our parents grow older.
And older. Or not.
In the name of Jesus,
Hope of all hopes,
Amen.