I messaged a friend the other day, reminding us both of life in our early 20's when the days were carefree and simple. Sitting on our dormitory beds eating chips, chocolate bars and Diet Coke(balance) was a favorite pastime and our greatest stressors were a paper due the following day or a test we might not have studied enough for. Thirty plus years later we're in the midst of the season of aging parents and the heartache and difficult complexities of disease and decline and the dying of our loved ones.
I live in an 11 story condo with another aging family. The culture here is warm and familial and I have varying degrees of awareness of the sadness many are facing.
Living in this pandemic world has heightened the challenges and issued forth fresh, never-before-imagined pain.
It's been six months since I've seen my mother-in-law in her Long Term Care home. Six months! She lives in a beautiful family environment, is lovingly cared for by her staff family, and is relatively content in her private, dementia-lived world. I'm grateful. But I still haven't seen her. At times I feel cut off, almost grieving her loss before she's gone. Because in some ways, she is gone.
My father-in-law is fading, virtually week by week. He has not seen his beloved of 67 years for six months either. It doesn't matter that she does not know him, that the relationship they once shared is non-existent, she is still his wife and "for better or worse, in sickness and in health" is etched on his heart. Some days I'm angry--angry because a seeming life sentence has been imposed on him--to die of a broken heart.
My friend/neighbor's husband was transferred from one hospital to another, now on a crisis list for a bed in Long Term Care. She was informed she can only visit him once a week for one hour, by appointment only. They have been married 61 years and though he is not the man she married, she loves him. He understands very little of what's unfolding, but her face brings light to his own, and his anxiety calms and rest comes easily. For one hour.
My friend/walking partner's husband died Monday night after years of untold suffering. She cared for him for almost six and a half years, while the past nine months have been in long term care. Two of her children live outside of Canada and while they could come, it is doubtful that one of them could return to her country for months. And so she makes the best of the circumstances. She's become efficient at this.
Aging and disease, death and grief all seems to have been relegated to this sanitized, achingly, lonely realm. We're all doing our best to abide by the rules and offer our polite,
Yes, I understand." But some days, I want to throw a temper tantrum, stomp my feet and scream--"THIS IS NOT OKAY!!"
We need to hug our loves til our arms ache, hold lonely hands and kiss the cascading tears. Because it's just so heart stopping-cruel to be locked in--or out.
Yet this is our now. I do understand this. And, I don't like it.
The Apostle Paul in the book of Romans is speaking my words and echoing my spirit at present. He talks about creation and we, the created beings, in a state of groaning. Yes, oh yes we are!! It's a groaning which expresses a frustrated yearning for God's deliverance from life's hardship and oppression. Mmmm...yes, ohhhh yes. It's not ours today and so we wait. "Eager hope" and "perseverance" are the words Paul uses to describe how we should wait. I'm not always stellar at this kind of waiting. But God is patient as I fumble along the way.
Naomi Raine expresses in a stunning, powerful way this "now and not yet" hard, painful way of living and the story I will tell.
One day.
