My mother sits in her chair by the window, day after day. Her view is a small patch of back yard. That's it. She watches the seasons change in that patch. Her hearing is bad, eyesight, not much better.
Pretty much nobody but my sister, brother and I are there for her. It's incredible to believe that nobody else stops by, given her life of hard work in ministry. She can talk on the phone if people speak up slowly and loud, but nobody stops by just to be there for a few moments to pray with her, or drop off a small plant or card.
She spent all of her adult life, all of it, supporting others. She was constantly in the background in her husband's ministry. We know, because her three children saw it all. The years of cooking for ministry banquets of various kinds, cooking for camps for underprivileged kids at Devil's Lake State Park, cooking for camps for privileged kids up on the islands of northern Minnesota, serving in the business office, cleaning there late at night and helping lay carpet, hours before an open house, serving at the switchboard, running a household as a de facto single parent, then years of serving as a grandmother and providing childcare for her grandkids, and on and on and on.
But now she sits and stares out the window, mostly forgotten, and the world speeds by outside. She doesn't have anything more to give, that's why she's forgotten. Like so many elderly and others who have nothing to give, they no longer count much to those around them, even to those who claim to be Christians, even in churches and ministries they helped into existence. The young, the healthy, the "high capacity" people simply have no time. No time. No time. No time. Life is exciting and full of possibilities when you're young, when you are young parents with kids to shuttle to those endless activities and sports practices. No time for anyone else.
It seems to me that if Jesus is our role model, we should make time. Not out of pity, but out of gratitutde and love. Not to check something off a list, but to sit and listen to what those with years and wisdom have to say, to hear their amazing stories, or just to sit with them.
When my mother was younger, she ALWAYS had time for others. That has been the focus of her entire life. With great clarity, I remember visiting elderly friends she had come to know through the ministry my dad ran. My sister and I went along sometimes to visit them. In high school, I remember visiting one lady named Margaret who lived in a down-at-the-heels high rise government senior apartment. The visit made a lasting impression on me.
Margaret was legally blind. I was shocked at the fact that she could live alone without any family support. She asked my sister and me if we would get her coffee at the grocery store across the insanely busy Layton Boulevard. We complied. I looked at the street and wondered how on earth this little lady ever could have crossed the street unassisted. Her apartment was not clean, because she couldn't see to do it.
On the end table was an old, sepia photo of a woman with two little boys. learning against her I later asked my mother who they were. "Those are her sons," Mom said. "She hasn't heard from them in years."
I had a hard time taking it in. This sweet, Christan lady had sons who didn't bother to check on her, provide for her, sit with her? It disgusted me deeply.
The greatest gift we can give anyone is an attentive presence. Showing up for them. Like all relationships, that is 90 percent of it. And put the phones away. Don't insult these elders by texting or scrolling as their lives slowly ebb away in front of you. You can never get those moments back. If this isn't part of instructions to children and teens upon visiting an elder, it should be.
The truth is this: We all fit in what we want to fit in. We make time for what matters. to us. Underneath claims of other demands, we often live by preference. Not always, but often.
Don't forget the lonely ones in your family or life. Meet them in their twilight. Notice their hands and remember all that they once did for you and others. Stay a while. Tomorrow may be too late.
Such beautiful, beautiful hands!
They're growing feeble now,
For time and pain have left their mark
On hand and heart and brow.
Alas! alas! the nearing time
And the lonesome day for me,
When 'neath the grasses, out of sight,
These hands will folded be.
But far beyond this shadow-land, —
And many a friend is there —
I know full well, these dear old hands
Will palms of victory bear!
Where crystal streams, eternally
Flow over golden sands,
And where the old are young again
I'll clasp my mother's hands!
From My Mother's Hands
