First Things

A remembrance of Fanny, at the request of her family.

"Teach us to count up the days that are ours and we shall come to the heart of wisdom." (Psalm 90:12)

“Wisdom is no automatic perogative of old age. It is a gift of God, which older people must accept and set as their goal . . . The essence of this wisdom is the discovery of the profound meaning of human life and of the transcendent destiny of the person in God”
(The Dignity of Older People, Etc., Pontif. Counc. Laity, 1998)

Elderly people present America’s newest challenge of respecting life. It is no longer infants alone. In fact, one of the reasons for longevity in this country is improved infant healthcare.

We love babies. They are familiar; they are in pictures everywhere; put wings on them and they are cherubs. We know what to do with babies and with children: we hold them, we protect them, they play across our laps, they laugh, and when they are children they tell us what they did at school that day.

We love our elderly, but they are not familiar. They are not always in pictures everywhere; put wings on them and they do not look like cherubs; when age and disease processes prevent the full measure of thought and speech, they do not always tell us in ways they used to about their life that day, or even at that moment. The world does not always know the how of being with our elderly. Fanny was my first teacher.

When I knew her, Fanny was old--86 years. She was in a wheelchair in a long-term care facility where I had just come to be the chaplain. I was told that part of my responsibility was to dine in each area of the facility in order to get to know the residents and to discuss with them whatever parts of their lives were important to them. The first space available at a table in the Nursing Center, which is where residents need the most physical care, was with two ladies near a large floor-to-ceiling window in the corner of the dining room. I asked them if I could join them for lunch. One of them said “Hi” with a big toothy smile; the other, with one arm under a bib, opened her mouth a tiny bit. With a sparkle in her eye she smiled a very small smile, a smile that seemed to want to be bigger but couldn’t, owing to some physical debility, and in an almost whisper said “Yes” as well. This latter was Fanny.

For someone used to very articulate patients in a hospital or parish church, I knew that this was going to be a stretch. Nervous, I decided to get some hot tea. I asked the ladies if they would like some. The big smily woman looked confused and said “No”, and enthusiastically asked me if I liked carrots. Fanny took a few minutes, but in a half whisper said “Yes . . . I would love some”.

Through what came to be a weekly ritual, I learned that both Fanny and, I’ll call her "Ella", had dementia. I learned as well that 51% of persons in this country over the age of 85 had some form of dementia, and I asked myself “Who are they?”--not just “Who are they?”, but “WHO are they?”.

I learned that who Fanny was, was someone with a wry wit--if I waited long enough for the words to come out in an almost whisper, and listened hard enough. I learned that just because someone is old and frail, or has dementia doesn’t mean that they can’t make a joke. In fact, one of the enjoyable things about Fanny was that she always had a commentary. Once, after Ella’s weekly question to me if I liked carrots, Fanny smiled, sparkle in her eye and upturned lips said “I wonder how she stands on broccoli?”.

I learned that just because one has dementia, it doesn’t mean that one doesn't’ still love, have feelings, and a sense of the normalcy of the attachment and loss in life. Once, while sitting in Fanny’s room, she cried. She missed her family in Colorado. I sat with her in her room awhile, held her hand, and said “I’m sorry”. She said, again in this whisper-voice that one had to wait for and listen hard for: “That’s all right . . . that’s life”.

In a body immobilized by gravity, time, and increasingly declining health processes, Fanny communicated with her face. Her cheeks moved up and down with the effort of opening her mouth to whisper clever observations; her eyes sparkled and glinted to the side, whether with a “Thank you”, or an ever-frequent wry smile. “Ella”, her table-mate, had her own manner and gifts for me.

I did not know Fanny as the spouse, mother, and sibling that she is remembered for today. I know Fanny as the face of a teacher; her lesson: that there is an indomitable spirit that resides in this flesh of ours. I know through her that humor, and love, and determination, and will and all the bits and pieces of what make us human apart from these bodies are able to perdure despite the most bitter odds of brain and body. We have so much to learn from Fanny.

No one will know exactly what went on in Fanny’s mind these last few years. What is certain, is that far from giving up on life, in response to it, like the tea, she seems to have said: “Yes . . . I would love some”.

Vox in Rama

"A voice was heard in Rama, Rachael bewailing her children
. . . and she would not be comforted, for they were no more"
(Matthew 2:18 [Jeremiah 31:15] Feast of the Holy Innocents)

Some recent voices:
--84 y.o. female, former home-maker, organizer of Catholilc Daughters for 32 years in her parish, widow, resident in a nursing home: “Where did my Church go?”
--82 y.o. female, former social worker, secondary diagnosis of dementia, never married: “I’d like to go to confession; I guess they don’t do that anymore.”
--Daughter of female resident in a nursing home: “I’m Baptist, but my mother is Catholic; they think she’s going to die today. They said the priest told them to call another ‘parish’ because she’s not in his ‘parish’ . . . what does that mean?”
--90 y.o. male resident in assisted living, member of his parish choir for 40 years: “It would be nice to go to Mass more often; I guess they don’t have a ‘visitation policy’.”
--85 y.o. female, former home-maker and nurse, widow, mother of an only child (deceased), resident in a nursing home: “I’ve learned to live without the Church . . . I guess this is my Church now.”

These are just some of the voices that I hear as a chaplain in a long-term care environment. I know that there is so much to do in the Church today: the ordinary person in the pew needs evangelizing (indeed, what is baptism for nowdays?) and clergy need educating.

While we wait . . .

"Then he will say to those at his left hand,

'You that are accursed, depart from me . . .
for I was hungry and you gave me no food,
thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
I was a stranger and you did not welcome me,
naked and you did not give me clothing,
sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'
Then they also will answer,
'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty
or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison,
and did not take care of you?'
Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you,
just as you did not do it to one of the least of these,
you did not do it to me.'
And these will go away into eternal punishment,
but the righteous into eternal life"
(Matthew 23:41-46).

And . . .

The Pontifical Council for the Laity (1998) in
The Dignity of Older People,
(Caring for older people living in public
or private residential structures):
"The uprooting of older people from their natural families
would be less traumatic if the community
were to maintain links with them.
The parish community, 'family of families',
must turn itself into a 'diaconia'
at the service of older people and their problems.
It must also seek to co-operate with the authorities
responsible for running such residential homes
with a view to finding appropriate ways
to ensure the involvement of the volunteer services,
the provision of cultural activities and religious service.
The latter must ensure that older people are able to be nourished by the Eucharist" (Par. 19).
"To accompany older people, to approach them and enter into relation with them, is the duty of us all" (Ibid., Conclusion).

As with Scripture, so with the words of man: they seem to be open to interpretation.

We are born

There is something unkind in the order of nature; but there it is: “since by man came death” we’ve had old age ever since as well. As for death, that inevitability seems to most not as awful as first when we are young it sounds--we understand it as it is: an inevitability, and we generally have long enough to live with the idea such that when it comes (if not brought on suddenly or painfully protractedly), we’re pretty well suited to the task (of dying that is). As for getting old, that's another story.

The story begins as Dickens would say when “[we are] born”. We are instantly attached, and it is a lesson that we will never forget. The lesson: that when we don’t have what we’re attached to we get pretty upset, be it Mommy, spouse, car or hairline. We creatures are not particularly keen on things being other than we like them, want them.

Indeed, for all of the Western Tradition’s talk of change (as Aristotle would say) being the “most evident thing in the universe”, we certainly don’t like what we see. But that’s just it: it takes a long time to notice it. And why not: if the mirror is our only romance (rather than other people), if older persons are only our parents or grandparents (and, bless them, heaven knows the psyche tries to distance ourselves from ever being ‘them’), and if our culture focuses almost solely on how young, beautiful and fast we all should be, then what chance do we have? No, it is not Death that comes “like a thief in the night” (we’re expecting him--and besides somewhere or other we heard--and when push comes to shove want to believe--that "God", "Jesus", or "Somebody Upthere" put an end at least to eternal-death), no it is not Death that is the unexpectedly returning Master (though that can be true enough), it isn’t even Old Age: it is Aging--the stealthily, creeping, passing of things as they are. This is why the Psalmist could say: “[our] days are as grass . . . the wind passeth over it, and it is gone”. Not because life is all that fleeting, but because we can so easily fail to desire to see things as they are: we like them the way they were or as their ever-imagined should, could or would be. Like the tombstone says, we live from date to date. Looking at said stone, I suppose one could wonder “what went on in between?”.

I should like to suggest (and I am certainly not the first) that the curse of our kind is not Death, nor is it Aging. It is, rather, the possession of a culture that in many quarters is never quite settled not to have things, people, places and ourselves the way we like them, the way we want them--like when we were born.