Pastor Mickey Crane told the Easter worshipers about my Dad’s 95th birthday coming up this Friday, the 13th of April. “That’s a big thing,” he said. “But don’t worry,” he smiled, “most of you are not going to live that long.”<\/p>\n
Actually, living this long has been a surprise to both my parents. Mom turns 91 in July and so far holds the longevity record in her large family, of whom she has only two siblings left. “We never thought about it,” she says. And with Dad’s taking retirement on disability back in 1961, I assure you he never thought about living this long either. No one would have given him a chance.<\/p>\n
I spent the Easter weekend with Mom and Dad, driving up Friday and back to New Orleans Sunday evening after filling the pulpit at the family church (New Oak Grove Free Will Baptist at Nauvoo, Alabama) Sunday morning. On the way home, I began reflecting on what life is like for them now that they’re in their nineties. Their circumstance is probably the same story for a lot of others in their age group.<\/p>\n
Each day is pretty much the same. You don’t feel like going anywhere, and even the occasional trip to the doctor is a big deal. So you stay at home. It’s the only place you want to be.<\/p>\n
You know all your doctors, nurses, and druggists as intimately as you do family members. In their case, the home health nurse arrives on a published schedule and Mom usually has lunch waiting on her. With the excellent health insurance they carry through Dad’s lifelong involvement with the United Mine Workers of America, their co-pay at the druggist is a whopping 10 cents. Whatever frustrations they have in their lives, my parents have no complaint about their medical insurance, and we’re blessed by that.<\/p>\n
The arrival of the newspaper and the morning mail are the high points of your day. And on those days when the mail carrier zooms past without stopping, you feel a little cheated. “Did she forget us?”<\/p>\n
\nThe first thing you check in the newspaper–before anything, headlines, anything–is the obituaries. Increasingly, you know fewer and fewer people who have died. They’re all younger than you now, some by decades. You can recall when you knew almost everyone in the obituaries, but by now you have outlived all your contemporaries.<\/p>\n
In your conversations with one another, one phrase keeps popping up with regularity. “Is he still living?” You bring up friends from the past with whom you lost contact years ago and wonder about them. Mostly you do not ask where he lives or what’s she’s doing. Just if they’re still alive.<\/p>\n
Every thing in your body hurts and they don’t make enough medicines to stop it all at the same time. Sometimes you find it easier to stay in bed all day and try to sleep than to get up and deal with the aches and pains and treatments.<\/p>\n
You’re glad to have company so long as they don’t come too often, talk too fast, or stay too long.<\/p>\n
No food has much taste. You eat just to stay alive and usually in small amounts. Going out to a restaurant is like punishment.<\/p>\n
You talk of Heaven occasionally, and your eyes mist up quickly. Dad said, “It’s like the old story of the woman on the ship that was sinking in the Atlantic storm. They asked why she wasn’t afraid and she said, ‘I have a daughter in New York and one in Heaven. Whatever happens, I’ll soon be seeing one of my daughters.'”<\/p>\n
I was about to leave for the long drive southward and we were saying our goodbyes. It was three p.m. and I’d heard Mom rousing him in his bedroom, saying, “Joe’s leaving and you want to get up before he goes.”<\/p>\n
He was sitting in his chair doing a breathing exercise when I walked in. I knelt beside him and lay my arm on his. After a little chatter, I ventured onto critical ground. “Dad, this old body of yours is getting ready for a transformation. Before long God is going to lay aside this earthly one and give you a heavenly one.” He understood far better than I. I added, “And you’ll see Grandma. And your two babies.” The 1939 baby lived only a few days before dying, unable to get its breath. His 1944 “baby”–Charlie, the youngest in the family of six children–died one year ago today, April 8, 2006.<\/p>\n
We had scarcely talked of Charlie; it hurts them too bad. We’d mentioned the new tombstone his widow, Carolyn, has erected over his grave. It’s something to behold: massive, black, smooth-as-glass, and imported. On the back side is a full artist’s rendering of my brother’s five grandchildren playing in swings with a school building in the back. On the right side, Charlie and his three sons are fishing from the bank of the pond. It’s very impressive. On the front in between their names is one of the last photos Charlie and Carolyn had made. We talked of that, how beautiful it was, how expensive it must have been.<\/p>\n
I think it was Edith Schaeffer who said her father always wanted to live to be ninety. “He managed it,” she said, “but he lived to regret it. His last years, his wonderful mind and personality were imprisoned in a body that no longer worked.” Watching Dad trying to get his breath sometimes–he has black lung, the coal miner’s nemesis–I can sympathize.<\/p>\n
They still have their sense of humor. Mom laughs easily at jokes and will tell one if it occurs to her. Dad said, “I was baptized in that little creek over toward Nauvoo. Ever since, they’ve called it Blackwater.”<\/p>\n
My brother Ron in Birmingham is engaging in a little crusade to get 95 cards and notes to Pop for his 95th. For those who wish to join the fun, my folks’ address is: Carl and Lois McKeever; 191 County Road 101; Nauvoo, Alabama 35578.<\/p>\n
Don’t go out and buy a card. A hand-written note is fine. Tell them your favorite Scripture or a story about your own parents or grandparents. Or a joke; they’ll like that.<\/p>\n
And don’t worry if it doesn’t get there by April 13. You’ll be the only one who notices.<\/p>\n
We used to make a joke in the family about all of us aging alongside our parents. We’d tease about all going in together and purchasing our own nursing home. “We’d have a family court in the middle and each of us would have our own wing coming out from the center.” No one is laughing much about that any more.<\/p>\n
Growing old is not for sissies. But someone says, “It beats the alternative.”<\/p>\n
We beg to differ, if the alternative is what we are celebrating this Easter Sunday. “To die and be with the Lord is far better,” the Apostle said in Philippians 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pastor Mickey Crane told the Easter worshipers about my Dad’s 95th birthday coming up this Friday, the 13th of April. “That’s a big thing,” he said. “But don’t worry,” he smiled, “most of you are not going to live that … Continue reading