Taking Dad Home

Just last week, my husband, Bill, drove his dad from Texas to South Dakota to place his dad in a nursing home. It's the day you hope will never come, but when it does, it always comes too quickly. Bill has spent the last several days in the nursing home and tromping around his childhood town, rediscovering roots and contemplating life. He just wrote a beautiful entry in his online journal that he agreed to let me repost. As he sat in a roomful of elderly people, here is what he saw:

"I stand in the corner of a dining room. It's filled with tables built for four, large enough to seat 80, and each seat is occupied. There's a strange quiet in this crowd, as if they have nothing to say or no one to say it to. The building looks as new as it must have looked in 1957. The retro architecture favors the occupants like Sinatra in Vegas. Nurses from the university are milling through the crowd bending to hear and be heard as voices mutter, barely audible. The majority of this room is women well past 80. I guess the women do outlive us much of the time. I make a mental note to eat healthier. I study their faces against the faces of the nurses barely in their twenties tending to them. Is it possible that these elderly women were once young, elegant, even beautiful? That these men were once strong, powerful, maybe handsome? That these people were once leaders, once brilliant, once applauded for achievements now forgotten? I thought about people I've met in nursing homes as a pastor over the years. I met a Poet Laurette who had a commendation from a President. I met a member of Glen Miller's orchestra who told me of the death of the big band era. He blamed Elvis in the cynical tone that revealed an old grudge with a hint of respect. I notice that most of the people in this room have a look on their face as if they don't think they belong there, surrounded by these old people. I wonder if they think of themselves differently than they are now.

I catch the eye of a woman in the room. A nurse tells me she is in her 90s. She doesn't speak, just looks. It's more than a stare. She watches. Her gaze is fixed and behind her eyes is a world all it's own. I walk toward her and sit, no words, just watching. Her white hair is like wide ribbons of satin. Her face is beautifully wrinkled, carved deeply around her eyes and cheeks by a century of smiling. The joy that did all of this damage is still in her eyes, embraced as an old friend, now woven into her skin. She is scarred by happiness and it's wonderful. These people are vaults filled with the treasure of stories and life that is locked away behind a door whose combination has long been forgotten.

As people have come and gone throughout the days I've been with dad, I have listened to stories. Tales of fishing and laughter, moments of unpredictability dealt with and now looked back upon with a certain appreciation for lessons learned. Old photos are often the springboard. And I'm taking something away from these moments. Make the people in your life tell you their stories. And then make yourself listen. When you're young, you think because you always have been (young), then you certainly always will be. For that's all you know to be, and its very unnatural to try to imagine oneself in a state other than the present. The elderly always are because that's all you remember them to be and it's hard to imagine that they once weren't. I think middle age is that realization that hits you when you've lived long enough to watch someone become old. If you're uncomfortable with reflections on life after spending time in a rest home I don't blame you. For me writing like this is as uncomfortable as wearing your underwear backwards. But this is a journal and a journal is both a trophy case for history shaping inspiration (or personal delusion) and a trash can for thoughts that have become lodged in the crevasses of the heart and can no longer be ignored. When we get to the end of the confining rails of temporal progression (life) and we have spent, and bled, and laughed, and wept, and fought, and loved our way through living, we will want someone to care enough to listen to our story. Someone who will see that the feebleness of the body is no indication of a feeble life or feeble wisdom. But to know that when it's all been said and done, that what we said and did mattered, to someone. Honor is demonstrated to another when who they are, who they have been, and who they will become matters to you, Thanks for coming along on this journey."

Beautifully said.