.On Aging Gracefully.

Something happens when, as a young adult, you spend time in a nursing home. Especially when the person you have come to see is beloved…

Everything material melts away. All those ambitions you had for losing weight and looking better than your friends become stupid. The question of what to wear tomorrow vanishes. The self-pity that was about to swallow you shrinks back to a manageable size when you stop, and think about someone else.

Last night I had the pleasure of spending an hour at a nursing home. I had the privilege of hearing Grandma tell stories of Dad’s first piano lesson, how she used to do her hair, and all the things you can do with flowers. She is in a wheelchair now. She suffered bleeding on her brain, and has a broken pelvis. Her mental faculties have lost some of their sharpness. Her hands tremble. But she still sings the praises of our Lord.

Twice in that hour she broke into prayer, and twice she started singing hymns of praise to Jesus. Her words of faith in the midst of her pain and confusion touched and convicted my heart in a way that I needed so very much. To see my troubles as small and stupid is the best thing that could have happened to me last night. To realize that when the rest of life and all its trappings fade away, the true person is all that will be left.

Questions  linger in my mind… when it’s my turn, who will they see? Whose praises will I sing? Or will I sing at all? Is there any place where God is not, or does not see?

Grandma Badeer told me another story. It’s the one where a Christian lady goes to a Good Samaritan nursing home to recover from bleeding on her brain, and God uses her in a mighty way. “That Mrs. Badeer, she is not like the other girls,” the Skill Care Staff said, “not at all.”  

[re-posted this week, originally composed July 29, 2008]

My November Guest

"My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list:

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted gray

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise."      -- Robert Frost, "My November Guest,"

We walked our little parade, dressed solemnly in black suits and ties. The ladies wore skirts and heels, wondering why they had bothered to apply the mascara that tears would soon erase. Friends and neighbors flew and drove to sit in a little chapel in Firth, NE and remember a remarkable woman of God: Miriam [Kassarjian] Badeer. We exchanged many words about her. All of them are true, yet none of them truly do her justice.

The ladies from Bible study came all the way from Omaha to remember the lady who added so much vitality and energy to their weekly group. They barely recognized me - the scrawny little girl with blunt-cut bangs that used to follow Grandma to Bible Study on Tuesdays during "cooking camp," times at her house. One woman spoke of how she had been a traveling companion to Grandma en route to a Christian Women's Conference. "Some of the things that happened at that conference were outside of my theological comfort zone," she said honestly, "but Marie always told me, "I want all that God has for me. I don't want to miss anything." She pursued God her whole life..." and then the tears broke in and stopped her briefly. 

It brought back so many memories for me, to hear the stories of others about things back in Aleppo, Syria, all the way up to her gracious attitude when she and Grandpa sold their home of 40 years and settled in GoldCrest only 10 minutes from our home. On one occasion I tagged along with Mom to go see Grandma for the first time in months. Travels had kept me out of State and away from family. I was shocked to see that her physical frailty was like I had never seen it before - she rested in a wheelchair, still smiling, praying, singing hymns when nothing else could hold her attention. She looked at me, took my hand, and said, "I want you to have the best that God can give you. Not for the glory of Noelle, but for the glory of God. We serve an awesome God."  I almost burst into tears, right there in the hallway. All the way home, I wondered what kind of faith speaks those words at the end days of life in a nursing home? And how can I cultivate that faith in my soul right now? 

I remember, too, those mornings spent in Grandma's kitchen, around the table with Grandpa and my sister Leah, reading the Bible. The day did not begin until we had opened the Bible, read aloud, done some singing and prayed for those that needed prayer. Grandma gently opened my first Bible, a little blue Precious Moments copy, and taught me how to cross-reference. Her handwriting still marks the margins of that little Bible, all over in the book of Psalms. The books that I inherited from her library are underlined with red pen where she found things pertinent to her spiritual life. I may have traded the red pen for a pencil, but those habits have become an integral part of who I am, just as they were a part of her.