The Mom Weekly Volume 43: May 28, 2024
Notes:
I am not going to downplay how difficult I find it coming to terms with this broken ankle, and not knowing how it will all play out. (For instance, will I or won’t I need surgery? I may find out more tomorrow at an appointment.) I am so grateful I have Dad and all of you to help with so much, and getting me around from place to place. But it is hard, as I am such a “doer” and really like to be active.
This brought to mind the Scripture perhaps from a few Sundays ago, John 21:15-19. I do not have a lot of bandwidth for writing about things, and I did have something else queued up, but I really wanted to write about it. Then I thought: I’ve written about this Scripture before. But I hadn’t seen it in years. So I dug it out of the vault. While it is very poignant and more than a little bit emotional, I will share it.
Let me just say that I still consider myself to be many decades from “the end of my life,” as the end of the post says. But what is true is that I’ve had to practice acceptance of my limitations right now, and, less challenging, practice gratitude for all the wonderful help that I am receiving. I also find myself thinking again about how my parents were such a good example of doing the right thing with grace and good spirit, and how wanting to be like them helps me be a moderately cheerful patient right now.
Thank you so much for all your help and good care, and remember how much I love you,
Mom
The Kind of Death to Glorify God (From the Vault, May 2007)
Yesterday’s Mass gospel reading was John 21: 15-19, in which Jesus asks Peter repeatedly, “Do you love me?” Finally an exasperated Peter replies, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” The gospel passage concludes:
” And Jesus says to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.’ He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”
As I heard the gospel proclaimed in the early morning yesterday, I was so struck by the statement about “someone else will dress you and lead you…”. John refers to the crucifixion of Peter, but I have often thought about it describing the profound loss of autonomy experienced by so many people towards the end of life. I see this now in my parents, and the suffering that they both experience as a result of their changed life in recent years.
There has been hospitalization, a move to assisted living, more hospitalization, the continued memory loss and weakening of my mother, and now my mother in a hospice program. My father is daily confronted with the loss of his wife of 53 years. There is so much they have had to give up, and so much they have had to endure. And yet they do it with such grace and good spirits.
My mother was smiling and making jokes with me about a tip as I gave her a manicure when I visited earlier this week. My father quietly told me that many people, when they experience memory loss, forget those closest to them. And he told me, as I teared up, “But that has not happened yet with your mother, and I think that shows the strength of the bonds she has with family, and that is a blessing.”
All I could think was, in what my parents are going through and how they are accepting it, shows: here is a death to glorify God. In some ways, every death can be a death to glorify God; not that death is good, but it is our way to new life after original sin.
Accepting what we cannot change can be so difficult, but so vital, especially towards the end of life. And committing oneself to follow Him, no matter where it takes us. It reminds me a little of the prayer in the Stations of the Cross we pray at our parish during Lent. I think they are the ones written by St. Alphonsus Ligouri. There is a line about accepting the manner and the kind of death that comes to us, and it always gives me a chill because it is such abandonment to Jesus and God. I pray because I want that kind of trust and abandonment to God, not because I have it.
It is easy for me to write about this kind of glorifying God, as a very healthy young person with lots of choices. Mostly, I decide where I will go, and what I will wear, and what I will eat; I am at the height of my faculties. I hope and pray that I will have my parents’ same grace and faith towards the end of my life.
Interesting/notable:
Teach Your Children to Love America: Peggy Noonan in the WSJ (gift link)
I’ve written before about my love the United States, and that love is unironic and real, darn it! I can see the faults and the problems, but we are fortunate, and yes, blessed.
A quote from Noonan:
The manual includes a lot of opinions on historical events. One I liked was the assertion that the Civil War ended the day Ulysses S. Grant was buried in 1885. Why? Because America saw who his pallbearers were: “Johnston and Buckner on one side of his bier, and Sherman and Sheridan upon the other.” The first two were generals of the Confederate army, the last two of the Union Army. Henry Ward Beecher wrote that their marching Grant to his tomb was “a silent symbol that liberty had conquered slavery, and peace war.”
You come away from that vignette thinking not only “what men,” but “what a country” that could tear itself in two, murder itself, forgive itself, go on.
What are you doing this weekend?
So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:
*faith—when are you going to Mass?
*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?
*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?
*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).