Old Age
I remember reading someone (I think it must have been an existentialist) who said, "Death is not the opposite of life; old age is." I think, however, that old age is life, one particular life, squeezed down to its essence, which in some cases is very ugly. Old age is perhaps more frightening than death, because it represents pure, undiluted human weakness. A person is only able to "age gracefully" if he has already come to terms with his own weakness.
Listening to my grandfather talk, I want to cry . . . he will not admit that he has Alzheimer's . . . he blames others for everything and nothing, as if somehow that will make him feel more in control. He has been a hard-working, church-going, Boy Scout volunteering, orderly, moral person, but nothing in his life has prepared him to accept weakness. He has always been certain of how things ought to be, and he has always put them that way. What can I, the young and laughing granddaughter, say to him? How can I tell him that his strength is made perfect in weakness, and that only he who loses his life will save it? He learned all these things in the Lutheran Catechism when he was a boy, and feels no need to be told them. Yet he does need, desperately, to be told.
Listening to my grandfather talk, I want to cry . . . he will not admit that he has Alzheimer's . . . he blames others for everything and nothing, as if somehow that will make him feel more in control. He has been a hard-working, church-going, Boy Scout volunteering, orderly, moral person, but nothing in his life has prepared him to accept weakness. He has always been certain of how things ought to be, and he has always put them that way. What can I, the young and laughing granddaughter, say to him? How can I tell him that his strength is made perfect in weakness, and that only he who loses his life will save it? He learned all these things in the Lutheran Catechism when he was a boy, and feels no need to be told them. Yet he does need, desperately, to be told.
posted by Deborah | 10:15 PM
2 Comments:
You speak truth. My family has a theory that old age reveals who you really are: when your self-control is gone, and you can no longer put up your masks, and everyone knows exactly what you think and feel. All that is quite on top of physical weakness. It is a terrifying thing.
I cannot tell you how to speak to you grandfather, but I will pray for you. You will not talk to him alone.
Oh Deborah. :( :) How insightful! God brings such weakness upon us gradually, because we cannot handle it all at once. I think you will make a lovely grandmother some day. :)
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