In our tradition, it’s expected we’ll do everything we can for our elders. All the time.”
An ancient thought from a long-lost civilization? A voice from a holy text? The first line of an assisted-living brochure? I jotted the quote on a scrap of paper as the television aired one of my husband’s many survival/Alaska/adventure/Yukon/backwoods/northwoods/woods-of-any-kind favorite shows.
The words came from soft-spoken subsistence hunter Caribou Charlie’s mouth on Yukon Men. He’d recently returned from an unplanned hunting trip, filled his freezer and pantry, and was in the middle of tackling an endless list of winterizing projects when his mother-in-law walked onto his property and quietly said, “I wonder if you would do me a favor.” His mother-in-law had little meat to sustain her through the upcoming harsh winter months.
Charlie dropped everything he considered a priority for a higher calling—helping provide for his aging mother-in-law. “Everything we can for our elders. All the time.”
It’s not unlike the reminder God gave His people when they’d strayed from a millennia-old tradition of venerating and caring for the aged. The original concept traces back through so many cultures and eras that one could argue caring for the elderly is an inborn instinct. But in the years when Jesus walked the earth, that God-given instinct had been overridden by a too-familiar distortion of God’s plan.
“We gave at the office,” the religious said when confronted about their disregard for the ill and aging among them. They followed what they believed to be the most noble—and noticeable—of ancient teachings. They were diligent to give an exacting ten percent of everything, including leaves of mint and fronds of dill and gift bags of ground cumin. But Jesus called them out for neglecting aging members of their families, unimpressed by the religious leaders’ perfectionism with herbs and spices.
The mint-minded missed the point. When it comes to caring for aging parents, we can’t phone it in, although we can phone. We can’t throw money at the problem, although we do have to invest, and some of that investment is in the form of dollars.
But this isn’t a book about getting it right, about responding to the mandate to care for aging parents. You have shown you care by opening a book with a title like this one. Its pages are filled with stories of people like you who are already invested and running on empty—people who are weary, uncertain, frustrated, hurt, saddened, aching, overwhelmed, overloaded, underappreciated, torn between the needs of children and the needs of parents, tasked with making impossible choices, enjoying the time they have with their parents but shattered by how short-lived that time may be . . . or all of the above.
As you turn the pages, you may catch a line that temporarily lightens your load or find a fresh perspective that converts tough moments into tender memories. Or you’ll breathe a little easier, having been reminded that you’re not alone. Maybe you’ll rediscover what you already know—that this season is hard, but your efforts don’t go unnoticed by the God who called you to somehow—even or especially now—“honor your father and mother.”
Despite our valiant efforts, the fact remains that we cannot stop the aging process. What we can do, with God’s help, is ensure that we and those we love age as gracefully and graciously as possible.
You can read these chapters devotionally—one a day or one a week or when you can snatch a moment in a waiting room. Or you can read until your soul is refreshed and your reasons for pouring yourself out for your parents indelibly etched. Then you can return to the courage-builders from God’s Word, the experiences of others on the path beside you, and a word or two from those who pair clinical wisdom with hard-fought compassion, until you feel bolstered and fortified for the next hard thing.
I’ll pretend my mom is still reachable by phone and Dad is napping rather than long gone. We’ll walk through this together.
We plunge, our shoulders hunched
Against the biting sting.
We cling to
The ones we knew
When age was a “someday” thing.