Old Age Is Not Kind

While living in Texas, My Love and I worked for eight years in the nursing home business. She served as Admissions Coordinator/Marketing Director, and I as Administrator. It was a very rewarding and enjoyable, albeit stressful, occupation. We were blessed with the opportunity to minister to people at a very trying and transitional period of their lives. Helping residents to adjust to the curtailing of their lives in an institutional setting, and assisting family members in the very difficult decision to place a loved one in our care, these were the focal points of our day-to-day energies.

Through the years of that work, and even in conversations since, many people have said to us that there is no way that they could do that kind of work. It would be too depressing, too sad, too taxing for them to handle. Yet, in reality, it was very fulfilling. There were so many moments of humor -- like the day I was walking Raymond (a resident in the grip of Alzheimer's disease) into the dining room. Another resident, Marian, was observing us passing and said in a stage whisper, just loud enough for me to hear: "Sort of makes you wonder who is leading whom!" I thought I would die laughing.

There were also many holy, sacred moments when we were able to pray with people as they were dying. Or pray with their family members after they had died. Those were God-blessed times. It was truly a form of hospice as we helped people let go of life here and move into the fullness of life in God's own hands.

One of the things that we learned that helped us to deal with the people and their circumstances: there is a huge distinction between a person and their illness. Many times we were called upon to remind family members, who were upset by the behavior of their loved one, that this was not their father or their mother doing this. It was the illness manifesting itself in this way. That separation of person from disease made it a little easier to cope with what was unfolding before them.

I recall all those times now as we find ourselves reliving those experiences from the viewpoint of the care-givers. In supporting and taking care of family members here in Iowa who are now journeying on those same roads of senility and dementia, I find the pain and the pathos, the humor and the joys, the frustration and fears that we helped others navigate. I am finding the struggle to be very real, the emotions to be very strong, and the desire to make the best decisions for all concerned to be more clear than the decisions themselves.

Yet we walk in faith and love, knowing that God's plan will unfold as we continue in the process. The path will be revealed to us as we walk it step by step. Where it will lead, only God knows.