Do not speak harshly to an older man, but speak to him as to a father, to to to – …
1 Timothy 5:1, 8
The honor we have in serving our family is not repaid it is repaid the way that we are allowed –
As each of my grandparents reached their final years their specific needs varied quite a bit . Some needed full-time, hands-on care. Others needed much less care until the very end. All needed something, and uniformly I was blown away by the way my entire family came together to provide that ministry. I was also humbled in the way that I felt God’s presence and blessing in the small amount that I was able to provide, but it was some of the most meaningful ministry that I have ever enjoyed.
As my grandparents entered their twilight years, it became necessary for some of them to go into nursing homes. Others, wewere able to care for at home. My mother’s father, Granddaddy, was the first to need the skilled nursing care found only in a nursing home. This happened shortly after I got out of the Navy and started college. His first nursing home was just 15 minutes from where I was going to school at the time, so I was able to visit him relatively often. Each visit was an event in and of itself . Sometimes, I would just read to him. Other times, the entire family, along with local police, would be out trying to find where he ran off to this time. It was always an adventure.
The aging of grandparents is avery unique experience to go through. Although, it was very painful, it was also very rewarding. My grandparents each touched my life in very different ways as they led me through my early years. Then as I helped them through their final years, they each again led me in very different ways.
When you are young, just learning how to master life’s most basic functions, and learning what a function is and why you care; your grandparents are inevitably there to help show you the way. Many of these times it will be to your parents’ amusement. One of my grandfathers tried for years to get me to chew tobacco, calling it his “worm medicine.” It must have worked, for as far as I know he never had worms.
My grandparents were there when I took my first steps. They were there again when I got my first stitches. They were there when I read my first words. They were there when I drew my first picture. They were there when I married my lovely wife. In the events of my life that mattered, they were there, and they loved and supported me. They were even there, all of them, when my parents could no longer see eye to eye and went their separate ways. I am one of those extremely fortunate people who had more grandparents alive when I graduated high school than most people ever know. When I graduated high school, I had two great-grandmothers, three grandfathers, and three grandmothers all living. Although my stepfather never officially adopted me, I always viewed him as my father as well as my biological father, just as he has always viewed me as his son. The same was true with his parents; they were just as much my grandparents as my biological grandparents.
During the years that I needed their assistance just to make it day to day, they would be there for me; and they thought nothing of it. Each of them took their turns at changing my diaper and feeding me. They held me close when I needed love, and they corrected me when I needed it. They opened the world to me and showed me how to appreciate and love God’s creation.
As I grew older, they became my mentors. They told me funny stories about my parents growing up and about them growing up. They would go on for hours about how they cared for me when I was still a toddler, and how they loved it. It seemed that they missed changing my diaper and giving me a bath. We became friends for a while. They were self-sufficient and so was I. Unfortunately, this time was fleeting; the aging process stops for no one. The time they each spent with me as an adult and them with all their faculties was way too short, and I long for that time every day.
It wasn’t long before their age caught up with them. One by one their bodies, and sometimes, their minds began to fail them. They were unable to take care of themselves. They could no longer bathe or dress themselves. They could not remember where they left their watch, and really didn’t care. One by one they passed from this world and showed me how to die with the same dignity that they showed me how to live. As they each approached their final days, they each opened Heaven for me in slightly different ways. They approached their deaths with no more trepidation than you would expect for one of them going to dinner. They were tired, and they were ready to see God face to face in a way they had only dreamt of.
Granddaddy was the first to go; he developed Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s disease is a cruel disease that robs a person of who they are long before their body stops functioning optimally. Granddaddy’s progression of this disease was silent and deceptive at first, but quickly got to the point where he did not remember any of us. For a while, it was not clear what was going on; he seemed normal, and was generally able to function. He began by making simple mistakes; not remembering why he went to the store. He couldn’t remember which turn to make to get home, which keys fit the house, or any of the other basic day to day functions that allowed him to live normally. From there the disease progressed slowly, but relentlessly. For years he was able to continue working at the church and doing small craft jobs. He continued to tinker in his workshop and work in the yard. For a time I remember receiving letter after letter from my grandmother telling me how my grandfather was raking the leaves. The disease was so cruel that it did not even allow him to remember that he had just raked the leaves. Eventually, the cruel disease robbed him of the dignity of even knowing who my grandmother was.
Just as slowly as his disease caught up to him our family recognized it too. For a significant period of time each of us denied that there was even a problem. We were each convinced that our father / grandfather could not possibly be having this sort of problem. We desperately tried to deceive ourselves into believing that all of these “coincidences” were simple mistakes and tried to rationalize them away. That tactic worked for a while, but to the detriment of our family. By our denying that there was a much more significant issue and delaying getting my grandfather the more professional help that he desperately needed, we put him and my grandmother under undue stress and strain, and significant danger.
The aspect of the danger really hit us when a sheriff over an hour away from his home called to say that my grandfather was with him. For a reason known only to him, he drove away from the house and went to a town quite some distance from his home. Once there, Granddaddy wandered into the local school cafeteria and proceeded to eat lunch. To everyone else he was out of place, but to him he was right where he was supposed to be. Thank God the sheriff was a compassionate and patient man because he took the time to talk to my grandfather, and with compassion began to search for clues for who he was and why he was there.
The sheriff began to go through my grandfather’s belongings after discovering that the information he could get from my grandfather directly was almost useless. In an effort to keep my grandfather from driving, my grandmother had taken his driver’s license from him, but that did little to deter him from heading out. It is important to remember that when mental faculties are not at their fullest take the keys and not the license; they will not remember that you took the license or why they need a license to begin with. Unfortunately, all this made the sheriff’s task of determining who this man was sitting in front of him much more challenging. Eventually, however, the sheriff found a business card for one of my grandfather’s doctors in his wallet. Through the doctor’s office, the sheriff was able to contact my grandmother and let her know the situation. Even more unfortunate was the fact that my grandfather had their only car.
My grandmother, extremely distraught, called my mother to help her out of this situation. My mother and my stepfather immediately got in the car to go meet the sheriff with my grandfather. When they arrived, my grandfather was still oblivious that anything was wrong, but was quite happy to see his daughter visit him “at work” in his mind, and was even happier that she had come to pick him up “from work”. They picked him up, thanked the sheriff repeatedly, and took my grandfather home, but this time they did not let him keep the keys.
One of the more confusing aspects of talking with people who are suffering from some form of dementia, like Alzheimer’s, is the fact that they seem to be in an entirely different space and time than everyone else. In my grandfather’s case, he was somewhere in the late 50’s or early 60’s, at one of the factories in which he had worked. For my grandfather, during his more productive years, he was a plant engineer for a number of different textile factories around the Southeastern United States. Whenever he drifted off to another time or place in his mind, it was almost always at work in one of those factories.
As odd as it may seem, my grandfather’s alternate place and time in his mind gave him and I a unique ability to communicate when others could no longer understand him. I could always discuss with him what he had been “working on” that day and how he had “fixed it”. As an electrical engineer myself who worked in numerous textile mills, I understood the technology quite well. I also had repaired much of the same equipment in some of the same factories that he had once worked in. Based on what he was working on and the way he described it I could not only tell “where” he was, but “when” he was. These moments of semi-lucidity were precious to me, and I will treasure them forever. This was our special time with each other that oddly enough only seemed to confuse everyone else.
When my parents returned my grandfather home, after his little journey, the realization hit everyone very hard that things could not continue as they had. Life dealt us a cruel blow, and we had to face the fact that my grandfather needed professional assistance, around the clock, and only a skilled care facility could handle it. Within a few days the necessary arrangements were made and he was placed in a nursing home close to where I was going to school.
At first, as he had his moments of reasonable cognitive ability and I wondered why we had to subject him to being in a nursing home. Those moments, however, were few and far between and much more regular were his moments of complete and total confusion and dementia. As much as I did not like the idea of him being in a nursing home, I also recognized that no one person in our family could provide for him what he needed at that time. This was an extremely painful realization, but it is a step that every family has to go through, and each person in the family goes through this process differently.
Within about a year of my grandfather being placed in the nursing home, he completely wore out his welcome. In a period of just weeks he escaped with a good head of steam behind him, was caught numerous times in other residents’ rooms who were female, had two women with similar mental capabilities to him get in a fight over him, and took another man’s cane and hit him with it. The home basically expelled him, for lack of a better term. In case you don’t know, when that happens, no facility will take the person and the state is forced to take custody of them. This was humbling for us all, and left us with no small amount of anxiety about what the future may look like.
The state taking custody of my grandfather was very traumatic to me. I had a hard enough time accepting the fact that he had to have some kind of care to begin with, but now he was becoming a “ward of the state.” Looking back on it, I wish they would have taken custody of him years before. The local, privately owned, nursing home did not give my grandfather near the attention that the state institution was able to. In the years that he was at one of two different state institutions, he was better cared for than anywhere else he went. They gave him great one-on-one attention and they kept the family very well informed of his status, regularly. They didn’t even get upset when he moved furniture around, one of his quirks that the nursing home got very upset about. Instead, and with minimal coaching, he ended up moving it right back, and was applauded for his much appreciated assistance in moving the furniture. It was definitely a more congenial and loving attitude that met him where he was rather than trying to fight against him.
It was at this point that conversation with him waned to almost nothing, and if there was conversation it was almost unintelligible. If we were lucky we could get just a few words out of him that made any sense at all, but usually we were not so fortunate.
Visiting him in one of these institutions was an adventure of epic proportion itself. The residents each have their own odd quirks about them, which give you just the smallest hint of the person they once were. Some were so compassionate that it was frightening, while others were so combative that it was frightening. The combative ones were usually watched very closely and the staff made it a point to know what triggers them to make sure that it did not occur.
The number of people that I have been in visiting one of these facilities would be a great case study for any psychologist looking at multiple personalities. I have been employers, employees, fathers, brothers, sons, and even on occasion, myself according to the person I was visiting or one of the other residents of the facility. My favorite, however, was when I was someone’s son.
Once while visiting my grandfather in one of the state-run facilities he was in, my mother and I were sitting in the day room with him trying to get some conversation out of him. We mentioned various family members, no result. We mentioned church music, no result. We mentioned a problem with the tenter frame on the finishing floor, and we got a few grunts and a smile. By the way, a tenter frame is a textile machine used for making textiles a uniform width and not skewed. One thing we discovered with my grandfather very early on was that his work was his life, and conversations that entered into that realm usually elicited a response, if anything would.
While we were attempting to talk with my grandfather a lovely older lady approached me. She was wearing a nice looking flower print dress, bedroom slippers, and carrying a purse. I could tell by her intentional look that she was on a mission, but I could also tell by the bedroom slippers and the disheveled hair that her mission should be to stay safely in those corridors. Unfortunately, she did not agree with that sentiment and intended to make me part of her plan.
She curtly strode right up to me and said, “John!”
This obviously caught me a bit off guard. I thought that perhaps my previous estimation of who she was may have been a bit hasty; after all, she knew my name. I politely responded, “Yes ma’am.”
“John Paul, you will take me home right this minute, I have my purse and I am ready to go.”
“Well, uh, ma’am,” stammering a bit as I groped for the right words, “I think you might have me confused with someone else. Perhaps it would be best if we sit down.”
“No, I absolutely do not! I would know my own son anywhere. Now stop trying to confuse me and take me home! I brought you in this world and I will take you out!”
“Uh, oh, wow.” From the eloquence of my response it is easy to see I was dumbfounded and my own mother was no help at this point. She was getting the giggle of her life watching me try to dance around this one. I have found that trying to rip them from whatever reality they exist in at that point is not all that helpful, so I tried to play along for a minute. “Mom, I don’t think that it is quite time to go home yet. We are still visiting with Sam,” as I indicated toward my own grandfather. “Perhaps, you would like to sit and talk with us.”
Unfortunately, I found out how in charge this lady had been before her own dementia began to have its way with her, and there was to be no discussion about it, “I told you that I am ready to go now, and I meant it. Now get your coat and take me home.”
Now my mom, not my new friend, became a big assistance in my quagmire, and she recommended to me, “Go get your coat, and take a long walk while you are at it.” I did take her advice, and when I returned my pseudo-mother had abandoned me and had no idea of who I was again. Although the entire conversation was a bit tense and I was glad it was over it was a bit sad to come back and she did not remember me. Their minds are often so fragile and fleeting that we only get rare glimpses of the people who they once were.
When my grandfather was first institutionalized his body was still in fantastic condition. He had the mind of a child and the body of a fully grown, very powerful man. He was still very much an intimidating physical presence to any who encountered him, but he was, in reality, as gentle as a lamb. Gradually, his body began to be where his mind was, and little by little his body failed him. What made this truly difficult for us was when he had problems which required surgery; his mind never came back with him from the surgery.
This happened three or four times and each time what little cognitive ability he had dropped significantly. The first time was the most noticeable because after that he never even tried conversation any longer and his ability to walk on his own pretty much went with it.
We visited him in the hospital after that first surgery, and he barely acknowledged that we were there. We noticed that it had been several days since he had been shaved, and I took the initiative to try to shave him. I got some shave cream and a safety razor from the hospital staff and gently began to shave him. As I put the cream on his face I noticed a sense of relief and gratitude come across his wrinkled brow. He was a bit startled at first, but he somehow recognized me, and let me continue. When I took the razor and began to shave those coarse whiskers from his face he shaped his face to make it easier for me to do this task. He would lift his head a bit so that I could get under his chin and he poked his tongue in his cheek (no pun intended) to stretch the skin there to make it easier.
This was the first of many times that I had the opportunity to do something this intimate for one of my grandparents. It was a humbling, uplifting, and gut wrenching experience each and every time. I was humbled to be doing a task for them comparable to them serving me when I was just an infant and could not do for myself. I was humbled by the grace they showed, each of them, to allow me to do this task and even help me to do something so intimate with them. Some of them still had cognitive ability at this point and we would actually have a bit of conversation while I was serving them in this way. I was uplifted by this precious time that we were able to share as grandson and grandfather, or grandson and grandmother. At the same time, however, it was gut wrenching in that both they and I realized that their time on earth was quickly drawing to a close and there was nothing that either of us could do to prolong it. All we had left was the this awkward time that I was able to help them do the most basic of tasks that they could no longer do for themselves.
While I had the opportunity to serve each of my grandparents in some way like this, I was reminded of the account from John 13 where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. He humbled himself to be their servant, but, as Simon Peter found out, they had to humble themselves to allow him to serve them. In order for me to do these intimate tasks for my grandparents, each of us had to humble ourselves. I had to be humbled to be willing to shave them, put lotion on their arms and legs, help them use the restroom, or even change their diaper.
Doing these tasks is not for everyone, but if this opportunity arises no one should avoid them. If you need to cry, then cry, but share the moment. At the same time, don’t be so somber that you take yourself so seriously that you forget to laugh; laugh and laugh heartily. This time together may be the most precious memories that you will carry with you of your loved ones for the rest of your life. Who knows, perhaps this same loved one may have carried with them this memory to the grave of doing the same for you when you were but an infant.
As each of my grandparents reached their final years their specific needs varied
As my grandparents entered their twilight years, it became necessary for some of them to go into nursing homes. Others, we
The aging of grandparents is a
When you are young, just learning how to master life’s most basic functions, and learning what a function is and why you care; your grandparents are inevitably there to help show you the way. Many of these times it will be to your parents’ amusement. One of my grandfathers tried for years to get me to chew tobacco, calling it his “worm medicine.” It must have worked, for as far as I know he never had worms.
My grandparents were there when I took my first steps. They were there again when I got my first stitches. They were there when I read my first words. They were there when I drew my first picture. They were there when I married my lovely wife. In the events of my life that mattered, they were there, and they loved and supported me. They were even there, all of them, when my parents could no longer see eye to eye and went their separate ways. I am one of those extremely fortunate people who had more grandparents alive when I graduated high school than most people ever know. When I graduated high school, I had two great-grandmothers, three grandfathers, and three grandmothers all living. Although my stepfather never officially adopted me, I always viewed him as my father as well as my biological father, just as he has always viewed me as his son. The same was true with his parents; they were just as much my grandparents as my biological grandparents.
During the years that I needed their assistance just to make it day to day, they would be there for me; and they thought nothing of it. Each of them took their turns at changing my diaper and feeding me. They held me close when I needed love, and they corrected me when I needed it. They opened the world to me and showed me how to appreciate and love God’s creation.
As I grew older, they became my mentors. They told me funny stories about my parents growing up and about them growing up. They would go on for hours about how they cared for me when I was still a toddler, and how they loved it. It seemed that they missed changing my diaper and giving me a bath. We became friends for a while. They were self-sufficient and so was I. Unfortunately, this time was fleeting; the aging process stops for no one. The time they each spent with me as an adult and them with all their faculties was way too short, and I long for that time every day.
It wasn’t long before their age caught up with them. One by one their bodies, and sometimes, their minds began to fail them. They were unable to take care of themselves. They could no longer bathe or dress themselves. They could not remember where they left their watch, and really didn’t care. One by one they passed from this world and showed me how to die with the same dignity that they showed me how to live. As they each approached their final days, they each opened Heaven for me in slightly different ways. They approached their deaths with no more trepidation than you would expect for one of them going to dinner. They were tired, and they were ready to see God face to face in a way they had only dreamt of.
Granddaddy was the first to go; he developed Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s disease is a cruel disease that robs a person of who they are long before their body stops functioning optimally. Granddaddy’s progression of this disease was silent and deceptive at first, but quickly got to the point where he did not remember any of us. For a while, it was not clear what was going on; he seemed normal, and was generally able to function. He began by making simple mistakes; not remembering why he went to the store. He couldn’t remember which turn to make to get home, which keys fit the house, or any of the other basic day to day functions that allowed him to live normally. From there the disease progressed slowly, but relentlessly. For years he was able to continue working at the church and doing small craft jobs. He continued to tinker in his workshop and work in the yard. For a time I remember receiving letter after letter from my grandmother telling me how my grandfather was raking the leaves. The disease was so cruel that it did not even allow him to remember that he had just raked the leaves. Eventually, the cruel disease robbed him of the dignity of even knowing who my grandmother was.
Just as slowly as his disease caught up to him our family recognized it too. For a significant period of time each of us denied that there was even a problem. We were each convinced that our father / grandfather could not possibly be having this sort of problem. We desperately tried to deceive ourselves into believing that all of these “coincidences” were simple mistakes and tried to rationalize them away. That tactic worked for a while, but to the detriment of our family. By our denying that there was a much more significant issue and delaying getting my grandfather the more professional help that he desperately needed, we put him and my grandmother under undue stress and strain, and significant danger.
The aspect of the danger really hit us when a sheriff over an hour away from his home called to say that my grandfather was with him. For a reason known only to him, he drove away from the house and went to a town quite some distance from his home. Once there, Granddaddy wandered into the local school cafeteria and proceeded to eat lunch. To everyone else he was out of place, but to him he was right where he was supposed to be. Thank God the sheriff was a compassionate and patient man because he took the time to talk to my grandfather, and with compassion began to search for clues for who he was and why he was there.
The sheriff began to go through my grandfather’s belongings after discovering that the information he could get from my grandfather directly was almost useless. In an effort to keep my grandfather from driving, my grandmother had taken his driver’s license from him, but that did little to deter him from heading out. It is important to remember that when mental faculties are not at their fullest take the keys and not the license; they will not remember that you took the license or why they need a license to begin with. Unfortunately, all this made the sheriff’s task of determining who this man was sitting in front of him much more challenging. Eventually, however, the sheriff found a business card for one of my grandfather’s doctors in his wallet. Through the doctor’s office, the sheriff was able to contact my grandmother and let her know the situation. Even more unfortunate was the fact that my grandfather had their only car.
My grandmother, extremely distraught, called my mother to help her out of this situation. My mother and my stepfather immediately got in the car to go meet the sheriff with my grandfather. When they arrived, my grandfather was still oblivious that anything was wrong, but was quite happy to see his daughter visit him “at work” in his mind, and was even happier that she had come to pick him up “from work”. They picked him up, thanked the sheriff repeatedly, and took my grandfather home, but this time they did not let him keep the keys.
One of the more confusing aspects of talking with people who are suffering from some form of dementia, like Alzheimer’s, is the fact that they seem to be in an entirely different space and time than everyone else. In my grandfather’s case, he was somewhere in the late 50’s or early 60’s, at one of the factories in which he had worked. For my grandfather, during his more productive years, he was a plant engineer for a number of different textile factories around the Southeastern United States. Whenever he drifted off to another time or place in his mind, it was almost always at work in one of those factories.
As odd as it may seem, my grandfather’s alternate place and time in his mind gave him and I a unique ability to communicate when others could no longer understand him. I could always discuss with him what he had been “working on” that day and how he had “fixed it”. As an electrical engineer myself who worked in numerous textile mills, I understood the technology quite well. I also had repaired much of the same equipment in some of the same factories that he had once worked in. Based on what he was working on and the way he described it I could not only tell “where” he was, but “when” he was. These moments of semi-lucidity were precious to me, and I will treasure them forever. This was our special time with each other that oddly enough only seemed to confuse everyone else.
When my parents returned my grandfather home, after his little journey, the realization hit everyone very hard that things could not continue as they had. Life dealt us a cruel blow, and we had to face the fact that my grandfather needed professional assistance, around the clock, and only a skilled care facility could handle it. Within a few days the necessary arrangements were made and he was placed in a nursing home close to where I was going to school.
At first, as he had his moments of reasonable cognitive ability and I wondered why we had to subject him to being in a nursing home. Those moments, however, were few and far between and much more regular were his moments of complete and total confusion and dementia. As much as I did not like the idea of him being in a nursing home, I also recognized that no one person in our family could provide for him what he needed at that time. This was an extremely painful realization, but it is a step that every family has to go through, and each person in the family goes through this process differently.
Within about a year of my grandfather being placed in the nursing home, he completely wore out his welcome. In a period of just weeks he escaped with a good head of steam behind him, was caught numerous times in other residents’ rooms who were female, had two women with similar mental capabilities to him get in a fight over him, and took another man’s cane and hit him with it. The home basically expelled him, for lack of a better term. In case you don’t know, when that happens, no facility will take the person and the state is forced to take custody of them. This was humbling for us all, and left us with no small amount of anxiety about what the future may look like.
The state taking custody of my grandfather was very traumatic to me. I had a hard enough time accepting the fact that he had to have some kind of care to begin with, but now he was becoming a “ward of the state.” Looking back on it, I wish they would have taken custody of him years before. The local, privately owned, nursing home did not give my grandfather near the attention that the state institution was able to. In the years that he was at one of two different state institutions, he was better cared for than anywhere else he went. They gave him great one-on-one attention and they kept the family very well informed of his status, regularly. They didn’t even get upset when he moved furniture around, one of his quirks that the nursing home got very upset about. Instead, and with minimal coaching, he ended up moving it right back, and was applauded for his much appreciated assistance in moving the furniture. It was definitely a more congenial and loving attitude that met him where he was rather than trying to fight against him.
It was at this point that conversation with him waned to almost nothing, and if there was conversation it was almost unintelligible. If we were lucky we could get just a few words out of him that made any sense at all, but usually we were not so fortunate.
Visiting him in one of these institutions was an adventure of epic proportion itself. The residents each have their own odd quirks about them, which give you just the smallest hint of the person they once were. Some were so compassionate that it was frightening, while others were so combative that it was frightening. The combative ones were usually watched very closely and the staff made it a point to know what triggers them to make sure that it did not occur.
The number of people that I have been in visiting one of these facilities would be a great case study for any psychologist looking at multiple personalities. I have been employers, employees, fathers, brothers, sons, and even on occasion, myself according to the person I was visiting or one of the other residents of the facility. My favorite, however, was when I was someone’s son.
Once while visiting my grandfather in one of the state-run facilities he was in, my mother and I were sitting in the day room with him trying to get some conversation out of him. We mentioned various family members, no result. We mentioned church music, no result. We mentioned a problem with the tenter frame on the finishing floor, and we got a few grunts and a smile. By the way, a tenter frame is a textile machine used for making textiles a uniform width and not skewed. One thing we discovered with my grandfather very early on was that his work was his life, and conversations that entered into that realm usually elicited a response, if anything would.
While we were attempting to talk with my grandfather a lovely older lady approached me. She was wearing a nice looking flower print dress, bedroom slippers, and carrying a purse. I could tell by her intentional look that she was on a mission, but I could also tell by the bedroom slippers and the disheveled hair that her mission should be to stay safely in those corridors. Unfortunately, she did not agree with that sentiment and intended to make me part of her plan.
She curtly strode right up to me and said, “John!”
This obviously caught me a bit off guard. I thought that perhaps my previous estimation of who she was may have been a bit hasty; after all, she knew my name. I politely responded, “Yes ma’am.”
“John Paul, you will take me home right this minute, I have my purse and I am ready to go.”
“Well, uh, ma’am,” stammering a bit as I groped for the right words, “I think you might have me confused with someone else. Perhaps it would be best if we sit down.”
“No, I absolutely do not! I would know my own son anywhere. Now stop trying to confuse me and take me home! I brought you in this world and I will take you out!”
“Uh, oh, wow.” From the eloquence of my response it is easy to see I was dumbfounded and my own mother was no help at this point. She was getting the giggle of her life watching me try to dance around this one. I have found that trying to rip them from whatever reality they exist in at that point is not all that helpful, so I tried to play along for a minute. “Mom, I don’t think that it is quite time to go home yet. We are still visiting with Sam,” as I indicated toward my own grandfather. “Perhaps, you would like to sit and talk with us.”
Unfortunately, I found out how in charge this lady had been before her own dementia began to have its way with her, and there was to be no discussion about it, “I told you that I am ready to go now, and I meant it. Now get your coat and take me home.”
Now my mom, not my new friend, became a big assistance in my quagmire, and she recommended to me, “Go get your coat, and take a long walk while you are at it.” I did take her advice, and when I returned my pseudo-mother had abandoned me and had no idea of who I was again. Although the entire conversation was a bit tense and I was glad it was over it was a bit sad to come back and she did not remember me. Their minds are often so fragile and fleeting that we only get rare glimpses of the people who they once were.
When my grandfather was first institutionalized his body was still in fantastic condition. He had the mind of a child and the body of a fully grown, very powerful man. He was still very much an intimidating physical presence to any who encountered him, but he was, in reality, as gentle as a lamb. Gradually, his body began to be where his mind was, and little by little his body failed him. What made this truly difficult for us was when he had problems which required surgery; his mind never came back with him from the surgery.
This happened three or four times and each time what little cognitive ability he had dropped significantly. The first time was the most noticeable because after that he never even tried conversation any longer and his ability to walk on his own pretty much went with it.
We visited him in the hospital after that first surgery, and he barely acknowledged that we were there. We noticed that it had been several days since he had been shaved, and I took the initiative to try to shave him. I got some shave cream and a safety razor from the hospital staff and gently began to shave him. As I put the cream on his face I noticed a sense of relief and gratitude come across his wrinkled brow. He was a bit startled at first, but he somehow recognized me, and let me continue. When I took the razor and began to shave those coarse whiskers from his face he shaped his face to make it easier for me to do this task. He would lift his head a bit so that I could get under his chin and he poked his tongue in his cheek (no pun intended) to stretch the skin there to make it easier.
This was the first of many times that I had the opportunity to do something this intimate for one of my grandparents. It was a humbling, uplifting, and gut wrenching experience each and every time. I was humbled to be doing a task for them comparable to them serving me when I was just an infant and could not do for myself. I was humbled by the grace they showed, each of them, to allow me to do this task and even help me to do something so intimate with them. Some of them still had cognitive ability at this point and we would actually have a bit of conversation while I was serving them in this way. I was uplifted by this precious time that we were able to share as grandson and grandfather, or grandson and grandmother. At the same time, however, it was gut wrenching in that both they and I realized that their time on earth was quickly drawing to a close and there was nothing that either of us could do to prolong it. All we had left was the this awkward time that I was able to help them do the most basic of tasks that they could no longer do for themselves.
While I had the opportunity to serve each of my grandparents in some way like this, I was reminded of the account from John 13 where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. He humbled himself to be their servant, but, as Simon Peter found out, they had to humble themselves to allow him to serve them. In order for me to do these intimate tasks for my grandparents, each of us had to humble ourselves. I had to be humbled to be willing to shave them, put lotion on their arms and legs, help them use the restroom, or even change their diaper.
Doing these tasks is not for everyone, but if this opportunity arises no one should avoid them. If you need to cry, then cry, but share the moment. At the same time, don’t be so somber that you take yourself so seriously that you forget to laugh; laugh and laugh heartily. This time together may be the most precious memories that you will carry with you of your loved ones for the rest of your life. Who knows, perhaps this same loved one may have carried with them this memory to the grave of doing the same for you when you were but an infant.
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