Elder Fear and Me

Elder Fear and Me

We called her “the Bone Crusher,” because we were just children.  My mother always referred to her as “Auntie from Ipswich,” which is where she lived.  I do not remember if she even spoke English – or perhaps broken English with a Polish accent.  I don’t even know what her real name was – first name, surname, or what.  All we knew then was pretty much all I know now:  she was my mother’s aunt or maybe great aunt and she had so much love all stored up inside her that she had to hug the guts right out of us kids.  If we saw her more than once every five years, we might not have lived through it. 

That being said, I think my first experiences as a child with older people were mostly positive.  Yet somewhere, at some point in time, that took a turn and I began to be uncomfortable, or perhaps fearful of older people.  Now, here I am at midlife, most likely given the natural course of events, becoming an old person.  I guess it beats the alternative.  Nonetheless, I never know what to expect with the older set.

Take my Bella*, for instance.  She was harsh on me the first, oh, few years that I knew her at my workplace.  She has volunteered there since about the same time that God was working on his original formula for dirt to make mankind.  Her kindest words to me were saved for just after one of my most dramatic romantic break-ups.  And even then I don’t remember them being truly comforting words… unless you count, “Good riddance” as comforting words. 

Just last month I was surprised when she actually showed some interest in my most precious hobby:  raising puppies.  She doesn’t really even like dogs, which is why it surprised me.  Somehow into the conversation she mentioned a dog that she used to have and said, “I even used to feed raisins to that dog,” indicating I should try it.  I went home and got on the internet because I had strange feeling in my gut.  The web vet confirmed my suspicion:  raisins are toxic to dogs and can cause liver failure, and consequently DEATH.  See, this is why I don’t trust old people:  they seem to live and thrive on trying to pull one over on me.

Then there was a nameless woman in a residential facility south of Boston that spurned my earliest attempts at charity.  I had been invited by a priest to come to the private Mass in an unbelievably dilapidated, but huge chapel for residents of this nursing home facility.  The place freaked me out. It was where Boston put the elderly that had nowhere better to go and it was a glaring indictment of The Bureaucracy’s inhumanity to the elderly.  Despite being uncomfortable in my own skin, I decided that the best attempt at charity would be to sit in the pew next to a woman who was parked in some sort of a junky barka lounger in the center aisle and keep her company. 

We were in the middle of the church.  The front row was reserved for wheelchairs and a guy named Bob who thought nothing of lighting up a cigarette during the middle of Mass.  And he did.  So there I sat next to this woman, when she raised her trunk up and forward from the barka lounger about six inches and groaned:  “I want my sock offfff….”  I was about 23 years old and completely mortified.  I patted her arm and said, “it’s okay, just leave it on, Mass will be over soon.”  She snarled at me, “Don’t touch me or I’ll HIT YOU.”  I thought she was kidding.  The Voice from the Crypt reiterated, “I want my SOCK OFF.”  I touched her arm and tried to say something comforting when *BLAM* she hit me.

My hand stung.  She was no lightweight.  She reached forward and grabbed the toe of her compression sock and pulled until it snapped off and she thudded back into her lounger.  I believe I died of shock or embarrassment at that moment.  Then, as if once was not enough, she croaked:  “I want THE OTHER ONE OFF…”  I said, “no, no, it’s okay,” and she yanked sock #2 off.  I attended the rest of that Mass in a semi-stupor.  After the final blessing, someone came and took her and her chair away back into the facility and, quite honestly, I was glad that was over.  I tried very hard to make myself invisible as I walked out the door.  Some heartless human asked me as I passed by, “Why didn’t you just take her sock off?”  I don’t know.  I guess I thought you were supposed to wear socks in church.  I went to the car and cried.

Two years later, I was working in full time youth ministry and facilitating confirmation classes.  Two of the junior-year boys needed to do service hours … at a nursing home.  I love kids so much, I couldn’t let them go in there by themselves, even though we were required to get rabies shots or something before going in there for ONE MEASELY SATURDAY AFTERNOON. 

The two boys actually found a gentleman in a wheelchair and began touring him around.  The elderly man was delighted.  When the boys would stop and talk, the man would lift his hand dramatically and point forward.  He was mostly nonverbal, but his gesture shouted:  “tally-ho!  Onward, young lads!”

I found myself in the day room witnessing the remainder of a craft project:  painting bisque statues of animals.  The paint colors available to the residents were horrible:  brown, purple, and avocado green.  The artist-part of my soul suffered at the stifling options.  So there was little for me to do but hover like a hummingbird behind two women conversing about their current state of affairs.

One of them angrily raised her fist to the air and declared:  “Just let me die!  My kids put me here … and they killed my cat.”  Her pain was real and I felt the harshness of her state like a slam in the chest.  She continued, “I have no friends.  And here I am.”  The bitterness, well-warranted, was palpable and uncomfortable to witness.  And yet…

The other woman reached and touched her arm, “Oh Louise, I am your friend.  We are here together.  Our families have their lives to live, their jobs, their responsibilities.  We have each other.”  

Somehow, I felt like I was standing in the Presence of God as she said that.  It was such a sacred moment.  It cost her nothing to give her heartfelt friendship to her companion.  Louise softened and said, “Suzie.  You are a good friend, such a good friend.”  They grasped for each other’s hands for a moment and I faded away.  I learned more from this vignette than hours spent reading books or taking classes.  This is the heart of “Incarnational Ministry,” the simple message:  I AM HERE FOR YOU.  And it makes all the difference in the world.

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