Fleeting Memories

Rev 21:3-6  I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.  4 “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”  5 Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”  6 And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.

Last night, I changed my mother and put her into bed. As I was trying to get her settled, her breathing became labored and she could not get comfortable. She was not very responsive, and she had a distant look in her eyes. I was reluctant to leave her alone then. She seemed much more comfortable lying partly on her side, so I sat beside her on the bed and supported her. I held her hand, I rubbed her back, we played her favorite hymns. I prayed, I was feeling helpless, unable to make her better.  As we listened to the words of Just as I am: “Just as I am, Thou wilt receive, Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve; Because Thy promise I believe, O Lamb of God, I come, I come;” her eyes closed, she took one more difficult breath, and stopped. I prayed, and held her hand a little longer, but I knew she had gone. O Lamb of God, I come, I come… She left this world of impairment and disability, this life of frustration and pain, and she entered the glorious presence of her savior.

This last week had brought so many changes. Mom had forgotten how to swallow, I often had to massage her chin to coax her to eat. For lunch I had fed her an “Ensure” by teaspoon, one sip at a time. She no longer even tried to lift her arms to my shoulders when I transferred her from her bed to her chair. The only thing she had tried to say several days before that I could understand was “I love you.”

I am at a loss now. I don’t know what life is going to be like here. Mom and Dad moved in with us just before Christmas 2001. For the last 8 years, the one constant has been their presence here. Dad left us the day after Easter, 2004. It was amazing and humbling to hear him, in the anguish of his last days cry out to Jesus. And I believe that God had mercy on him and took him to be his own. Now Mom has gone as well. I would never wish her back here, the Alzheimer’s is such an insidious and debilitating disease. It systematically deprives its victims of the things that are most uniquely human. I believe it is a terrible assault upon God’s image in His children.

I am sad, I am happy. I am distressed, yet I am relieved. I thank God for the opportunities I have had to serve my parents. I regret and repent of all the times I was impatient and abrasive to them. I wish that I felt my kindness was greater than my selfishness, but I know my own heart. I guess that is the most difficult thing right now. As friends try to commend me for what I have been fortunate enough to be able to do, I am shamed by all the things that I now wish I had done, the things I wish I could do again differently. But that moment is past. Lord teach us to be kinder, gentler, more compassionate today, because eternity is just around the corner.

I really don’t know what will become of this blog. Its time is fulfilled. It really has no more reason to go forward. I will leave it here for a while, as an archive of this journey I have blundered through. Grace and Peace to you all. Thank you for all your prayers. God be merciful to us, we need it… we always have…

I am a little distracted at the moment. Nancy is home with Mom right now. I am hoping she has an uneventful evening with her. I, however, am in Pittsburgh. I am attending the Self-Study Workshop, by The Association of Theological Schools, the Commission on Accrediting. It has been a busy, but productive day.
Most people who know me, know that I am very uncomfortable flying. I must admit though, our flight was not bad. I have had to eat two meals in public, I hate the pressure of trying not to drop food on myself, but even that time was well spent. And I am much too shy to be good at at networking. So it is really a measure of grace that I am not totally stressed out and crazy right now.
I love teaching. I love watching the “lights go on” as we discuss the ins and outs of the Old Testament revelation. But I don’t relish administrative duties. Yet, here I am, getting ready to be the coordinator of our seminary’s accreditation self-study. I am encouraged. I think that it is a real possibility. I think we are going to do this. So, just a short note from my hotel room, remember me, the seminary, mom and everything in your prayers.
Peace 

Life is pretty simple for Mom these days. After I get her out of bed, and dressed, we wash up and brush our teeth. Then it is breakfast time. I really believe that her Cheerios and her hot cocoa are the best part of her day. That’s why I love to give her the cocoa. I like to hear her say, “yummy, yummy. I like to see her linger with the cup by her chin and obviously savor the moment. There is so little that engages her anymore.
This morning I put I Love Lucy on for her. A year ago mom would have giggled and laughed at some of the slapstick antics of Lucy and Ethel. Today, I don’t know if she even remembers what she is watching. Ancient reruns of Let’s Make a Deal are just as mysterious as the episodes of Lucy.
I took a picture of her and her cocoa this morning. I want to be able to remember the times when she is comfortable and content. I want to have images of the moments that she finds some distraction and comfort. Even more than stealing her memories, the Alzheimer’s loots and pillages Mom’s fleeting moments of pleasure and peace. I want to be able to remember that her days were not all confusion and melancholy. There are moments that can make her smile.
Peace, rjb

Phronema – Blog

More than 2 Weeks
Hard to believe that it has been more than two weeks since I have had a chance and sit and reflect; since I’ve spent any time taking inventory, and since I have written anything here. The days have hurtled past in a dizzy blur of activity. I have been surrounded by the stuff of life, weddings, births, deaths, and disappointments. I wish I could say that in it all I have easily traced the benevolent hand of providence. Instead I have been driven back time and again to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.
I have a saying that I use in class, the Hebrew wisdom tradition is all about living between what is and what ought to be. The language of God’s covenant with Israel clearly promised community blessing for national obedience. Yet on the personal level, the pious poor were left to wonder why the wicked prosper. (cf Psalm 73)
The wisdom literature was ‘all about’ exploring the why and how of living in a world that seldom lives up to our expectations. Qohelet ( Ecclesiastes) is by far one of my favorite books. Vanity of vanities, everything is pointless; everything leaves us gasping for breath… I am winded, I am weary, I ache inside and out. May our Father give us grace to believe and hold on when it feels like our hope is slipping through our fingers. In other words may his give us grace to be faithful, for His sake.
Shalom for now…
Added on May 21, 2009 by rjblackburn

Phronema – Blog

Life is too fast
I just cannot keep up with life. I feel like the guy who would spin dinner plates on sticks. He would get one spinning and then grab a plate and start number 2, he had to go back and spin the first one faster before he could go on to 3. It was a frantic juggling routine, I probably saw it on Ed Sullivan. But even then as a teen-ager I recognized it was an enduring metaphor for life.
I have just been too busy to blog, the things I would like to say, never seem as urgent as caring for my Mom or Wifey, or someone. We had dinner with a young friend tonight. Talking about vision and strategy and faith, always makes me somewhat melancholy. For some reason the words of Rudyard Kipling often haunt me:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
I often wonder if I have chosen the right path, I wonder if I have made a difference anywhere that will really matter from the perspective of eternity. I can’t muster the endurance and focus that I know I ought to have. I feel so weak and ineffective in the long run. I can only hold on, and once and a while jot a few words down but I have little hope that it has any lasting value. So we keep spinning the plates, because we aren’t fast enough or clever enough to know how to stop them. As Qohelet would say: this too is fluff and gasping for breath. (sorry, my own translation)
Anyway, peace to you…
Added on June 03, 2009 by rjblackburn

Phronema – Blog

89 years…
Well, tomorrow Mom will be 89 years old. Her Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease. Lately Mom has started moaning a lot. I ask her what is wrong, and she says nothing. If I ask her why she is moaning, she says she didn’t moan. This moaning combined with her saying ow and ouch to everything that is even mildly uncomfortable, makes it so hard to assess how she really feels. She does not complain overtly about much, but I always sense that she does not feel well either.
Her memory has definitely deteriorated since her bronchitis. Some days she stands well to transfer from chair to bed or to commode. Other days I need to be stern to make her participate in anyway in her morning routine. And pills, oh my, the last days it has been nearly impossible to persuade her to swallow her medications.
Alan and Jean are coming tomorrow to celebrate her birthday. We will make a fuss, all the time knowing that Mom wont remember for more than a few minutes at anytime that it is her birthday. But maybe we do this as much for ourselves as for her.
As I was finishing up the messy part of our morning ritual today, Mom’s CD player was playing “no one ever cared for me like Jesus, no one else could take the sin and darkness from me, oh how much he cares for me…” I don’t know how much she understands any more, but I could not help thinking about Matthew 25:40; ” inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” In light of how much Jesus has done for us, most of which we wont understand until glory, there really is no service that I can render to Mom, or any other of His “needy brethren” that can be considered extreme or excessive.
I need His grace, His help, to really be a servant. To keep things in perspective, I need to keep my eye on glory.
Shalom, for today
rjb

Phronema – Blog

I Can’t Imagine
I really can’t imagine being 89. This spring season has been hard on Mom. She has lost a lot of ground to her Alzheimer’s. As I used the emory board this morning to deal with her finger nails, I thought of how many times she would sit watching TV with dad and grab an emory board and do that herself.
Her disease really leaves very little of her dignity intact. She needs help doing absolutely everything. My only consolation is that she does not recall any indignity almost as soon as it is passed.
I was thinking about Isa 43:25. “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.” God promises not to remember our sins. In 1 John 1:9, we read “When we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins.” As soon as we confess our sins, he forgives and he forgets. All of our transgressions are gone. Mom’s forgetting is a pathology, God’s forgetting is mercy. And it is grace, that the one reminds me of the other. Have a great day.
Shalom for now, rjb

Phronema – Blog

Remember Now Your Creator…
Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, Before the difficult days come, And the years draw near when you say, “I have no pleasure in them” (Ecc 12:1) Qohelet ends his treatise with an extended analogy of old age. But this first verse of the section is perhaps the most tragic part of it. The end of our life is pictured as years in which we find no pleasure. I think that is so sad.
Some days a simple bowl of Cheerios will make Mom smile broadly and exclaim “yummy, yummy…” There are other days that I can elicit no smile for anything. On the days when Mom’s affect is particularly flat, when she is disengaged and disinterested in everything, I begin to realize how insidious death really is. The closer we come to the tattered and frayed end of the tapestry of our lives, it seems that everything is dimmed by the “shadow of death.” The bright skeins of joy and pleasure are empty and discarded now, leaving the patterns more subdued and colorless.
Yet we plug along. Mom was having a particularly hard time following instructions this morning, I asked her what was wrong and she looked so distresses as she answered, “I don’t know…” Death is the last enemy to be destroyed, and we know that our Savior has overcome the power of the grave. But is is so hard to watch the shadow of that specter dim and distort the image of God in his creation as age and disability take their toll.
Here is a simple prayer for a day in which we find many occasions to delight in the Lord and in his good gifts. For you, for Mom, and myself. Gratia et Pax rjb

Well, I have finally been able to start a new blog, for Mom and her Alzheimer’s.  I sure hope that everyone who had encouraging things to say about the old RCN journal, will be able to join us here. More later, for Mom and myself, have a great night!  Oh, yeah, I turned 60 today. I am officially a fossil.

Shalom

rjb