I ponder care for others ...

My Little Buddy left on a jet plane yesterday for a much-deserved weekend of fun and relaxation in Houston with her cousin Phyllis Cole. Little Pal has been through a lot in the last few years, including the sale and subsequent demolition of her family home, built by her father’s hands on nights and weekends, after long days in cotton fields, when she was still just a twinkle in his eye. No two people ever doted on a child as Julius and Hazel Cole doted on their daughter. And she returned it stroke by stroke.

Then, a few days ago, she watched her last parent leave this life.

Regret? I suppose she’s had a few, but if there ever was a child who watched over and cared for her parents more loyally or faithfully, I’d like to know about it. It prompts me, this morning, to offer a few thoughts on final care. It is a particularly exhausting and trying experience to dedicate one’s life to a caring experience that offers no chance for cure.

To borrow a thought from Thomas Gray, the paths of final care “lead but to the grave.”

We never thought we would be placing the dear person I called “The Lady Hazel” in a nursing home. After all, her daughter was, by education and training, a Registered Nurse Practitioner. A person in her keep would have to be awfully sick before nursing home care would be required, wouldn’t they?

We underestimated things, including the process of caring for one who, because of the ravages of advanced dementia, had lost both the will and ability to move. Try assisting someone, who may appear frail, in meeting all the essential functions of life on a daily basis. After seven years, we made the painful decision to seek professional help. We opted for nursing home care.

Allow me to say a few words about it.

We had experience with two facilities in Central Arkansas. In both cases, we found the highest level of attention and concern. We found no fault with either. Perhaps we appreciated it all the more because we knew, first-hand, the trials of caring for, what the Galilean might have included as “the least of those among us.” Perhaps those who seek every opportunity to find fault with, and sue over, the slightest perceived neglect, have never experienced the necessity of removing a comatose patient from a bed for daily care.

Many of Hazel’s nursing home companions required such intimate care. Some didn’t. Some appeared to have been able to live at home with family if the family had been willing. One can only guess as to whether the unwilling were among the first to find fault with the care received. Me? I hypothesize a correlation.

It reminds me somehow of an experience I had as a young planner. For a project we had, the firm sent me to interview a young doctor of theology who was serving his ministry by managing an assisted care facility owned by his church. The talk turned to the topic of family visitation.

“Would you like to know?” he said, “who are the most pleased with, and who are the most heartbroken over visits from their family?”

I assumed it had to do with frequency of visits.

“No,” he said. “If a child says he or she can only come, say every two weeks, but makes that visit on schedule without fail, a parent is satisfied. But some promise weekly visits and miss half the appointed times. I’ve seen an elderly person sit with a packed suitcase waiting in the lobby for a weekend visit home, only to be forgotten.” That’s what brings heartaches, including to those who have to watch it.”

We’ll never know if Hazel even knew when her daughter visited. If she did, she knew one thing. She could count on it.

The Galilean knows that I am a “cultural Christian” and not a literal one. But I do believe in saints who walk this earth.

I’m married to one.

Yeah. I've been lucky.