It’s been a crazy few months.
And I’m not just talking about Trump’s upset victory.
Before Thanksgiving, the sewage system serving our condo unit
backed up, resulting in $11,000 damage to our unit. It was supposed
to take three weeks; it took more like eight. The work, finally, was
completed a week ago.
Then, my 94-year-old father’s condition worsened, his
dementia and frailty forcing a move to a 24/7 nursing facility.
It was stressful, emotional time made all the more difficult
by timing and distance, that is, it being the depth of winter and 800
miles away.
My son, Rob, and I trekked north in (what we later learned)
was a rented minivan with bald back tires on snowcapped, icy roads
from Utah to Spokane, Wash. Heavy snowstorms closed down first
one interstate route and then another, forcing us to make the trip —
both there and back — on two-lane roads winding through the
mountains of western and central Idaho through the Nez Perce Indian
Reservation and then the rolling, barely plowed roads of the Palouse.
White-knuckle driving for my son, who was behind the wheel
during a total 30 hours round trip, often at speeds no more than 35
mph.
A couple times, sliding semi-trailer rigs had near collisions
just ahead of us, and we saw easily a dozen vehicles off the road due
to misjudgment of black ice.
We had prayed for protection, though, and we got it.
We also had prayed my Dad’s move would go well and without a
hitch. It ultimately did. Preparation beforehand helped a lot, too.
But it’s always painful to see a parent entered the deepening
twilight of life.
We remember them when they were younger, sharper; a hero, and
occasionally nemesis to a know-it-all teen or 20-something; clueless
or profoundly wise.
More than a year ago, it was my mother — in the final stages
of Alzheimer’s disease — who had to be transferred to a “memory
care” unit, leaving her husband of close to 70 years behind,
alone.
On Jan. 11, Dad joined Mom in the same unit, his room next
to her’s.
Nursing staff tells me they both seem at peace. Mom recognizes
Dad for a few seconds, but usually know him only vaguely.
But it’s enough for them. Mom can no longer talk, but she
listens to Dad’s soft, tender words through the day as they hold
hands at meals and activity times.
Dad, once recognized as one of the most talented banjo players
in the country, spends the in-between times struggling to complete
pure, resonant chords on a ukulele. His sight nearly gone, he sees
music with arthritic fingers, tentatively exploring the strings and
frets.
Back home in Utah, I went through the boxes of file folders, photos,
knickknacks, etc., we brought back with us from Dad's old assisted
living room.
Bittersweet. Tears fell for what was lost, but also for
lives well-lived.
Happy photos of a young couple, just starting out in the late
1940s, their lives stretching ahead of them. Pictures of my sister
and I as babies, and kids. Our kids.
But perhaps most precious of all were the love letters. Long,
handwritten letters from a 20-year-old Montana girl to her
27-year-old soul mate, professing longing and love. Letters back from
Dad to her, from various small towns where he was holding
evangelistic meetings, dripping tenderness, punctuated with his silly cartoons.
Letters
laden with the innocence of their love and dreams, the strength of their Christian faith that would sustain them through so many heartaches, and a few triumphs, in the years ahead.
So many decades later, their lives have been distilled to a handful
of heartbeats, the clasping of gnarled, parched hands, and murmurs of
love that, somehow, has survived the loss of so many memories.
The decades have wound down now. Months? Weeks? Days? Hours? What
remains for them as they rise to sunlight and yawn toward the dusk of
their time.
Then they nap or sleep the nights away, waiting for God.
