MY 97 YEAR OLD ROLE MODEL

If you’ve been reading my blogs then you know that last June I trained to be a hospice volunteer.  Two things came together to move me in that direction.  The first was the truly blessed experience I had with my own mom in the last 5 weeks of her life, the last few days of which she spent in a hospice home in Florida. By itself, that may not have been enough to move me to volunteer, but the Lord was at work in my heart in a way that moved me to do so.  I’d been convicted some time before about how nearly all of my ministry was centered in my church with my brothers and sisters in Christ.  I knew the Lord was moving me to change that.  So, when I saw a flyer at my church from a local hospital’s Visiting Nurses Association advertising hospice training, I signed up.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Since I began I’ve been blessed to serve many people at the end of their lives.  Some were in their homes, others in nursing homes or other care facilities.  As is usually the case, I volunteered to bring THEM comfort or encouragement or companionship, but in the process I am the one who receives the greatest blessing. 

A few weeks ago, an Alzheimer’s patient I’d been visiting for more than 6 months, died.  Although communication with him was difficult, even at the beginning, at the end it was almost non-existent, yet communicate he did.  Once, he affectionately brushed my face with his hands, another time he blew me kisses when I was leaving.  Often he implied, in perfectly lucid speech, that I surely had better things to do with my time than visit him.  As his condition deteriorated, it was enough just to sit with him and speak to him, even though he rarely responded.  I was sad when I heard the news that he had died.

Currently, I’m visiting with a 97 year old woman.  How I love those visits!  We talk about our families and we chat about her life experiences.  As I was praying for her on my way to my weekly visit, I thought about what we might talk about.  What I wanted to tell her is that when I grow up, I want to be just like her!

One of the things about aging that really bugs me is that the older we get the more our conversation tends to revolve around getting old.  While we may once have talked about world affairs, books we’ve read, places we’ve gone, now we talk about our ailments, our medications, our doctors, our surgeries.  Where we once may have experienced the joy of being alive, now we talk about all the physical trials we have on the way to being dead.  We’ve all been around elderly folk who do nothing but complain about all this – as if it’s somehow a surprise.  I don’t want to be that kind of elderly person.

My 97 year old friend is not like that and that’s why she is my role model for aging well.  For one thing, I have never heard her criticize or complain about her family.  She’s so proud of each one and freely brags about them and their accomplishments.  Her lack of complaining puts me to shame for all the complaining about people that I do! 

She is experiencing all the limitations of age, but instead of being taken by surprise by them, or lamenting over all she’s lost, she accepts them as part of the process.  She makes the best of what she’s still able to do by taking advantage of all that her living situation offers.  I can’t tell you how much complaining I do over the most minor annoyances!

She is never cranky, cantankerous, or edgy.  She is cheerful, gregarious, funny and wise, often giving me advice on what is to come!

Whenever I’ve tried to tell her how much I appreciate the way she has accepted the aging process and how much it encourages me, she brushes me off.  I love that about her too.

My day is coming and I already realize many of the negative qualities in myself that just might make me the kind of elderly person I don’t want to be!  But my friend is teaching me, it doesn’t have to be that way.  I can refuse to complain about my losses, my illnesses, my medications, my dependence on others.  Instead, I can choose to accept the process and in so doing I can be an encouragement to those around me, even when I’m 97, should the Lord choose to give me that many years.

If you’re reading this blog and you and I happen on one another in the years ahead and I begin complaining about aging – feel free to smack me upside the head!