The Aging Roar

The original focus of this blog is Mom. However, I can’t write about Mom without including stories about Dad. After nearly 55 years of marriage, it is difficult to talk solely about Mom, for their lives have been intertwined too long to not include snippets about the love of her life.

I was thinking about an incident with Dad and an image of a lion came to mind. The analogy is so strong that I can not shake it. The male lion is the king of the jungle. The lion is a majestic animal with its powerful body and full mane framing his face. He is surrounded by his pride of lionesses and their cubs. He fights off any male intruders that threaten his position in the pride. While the adult male cubs leave the pride, the females usually remain with the lion. Hmmm…reminds me of saying, “A daughter is a daughter all of her life; a son is a son, till he takes a wife”. Eventually the lion ages, his mane thins out, he may have lost some teeth, and his muscles are no longer capable of chasing off intruders. Another younger, stronger male fights for the pride and dethrones the older male.

For my father’s generation the man is the head of the household. He reigns over his “jungle”. I remember Dad roaring when frustrated with a home project that wasn’t going according to plan. Oh, how his temper would flare, the French curses bellowing and whatever tool was in his hand would be thrown into a corner. Mind you, he never took his temper out on any of us. He never threw anything at us. But we knew to back off when he roared. As for his “pride”, Dad is a family man, first and foremost. Mom is his lioness. Living here, with my girls, completes the analogy. Scary, huh?

I have never doubted that Dad would defend his family with every ounce of strength he could muster, if provoked. Outside violence never touched our family, but I saw him defend us in terms of keeping us safe. There was the time when we moved to the Cumberland Mountains of western Maryland. I was five and curious. Our backyard dropped off to a cliff, 50 feet above the road below. The first thing he said was for us to not go near the edge of the cliff. He was planning on installing a fence as soon as possible. I had other plans. I just had to see what the edge looked like. I quietly walked up to the edge. Just as I was about to peer over the side of the cliff I felt a jerking of the back of my shirt. Dad yanked at me so hard, worried that I would fall off the cliff. Yep, his worry came out in the form of a roar that continues to echo in my memory! To this day, I can’t stand at the edge of anything over 10 feet tall unless there is a sturdy fence there to protect me from falling.

Earlier this week the old lion roared, but it wasn’t as loud or as effective. Or maybe I am older and have learned to roar back. Dad’s car is in the shop for a couple of weeks, for repairs. The annual two week beach trip is coming up and he is planning to drive the rental car to the Jersey Shore, which is a two hour drive, at best. To top it off, he is the only driver registered for the rental. I remind him that he hasn’t driven to the Shore for a number of years. “Yes I Have!!!”. Stepping up to match him roar-for-roar, I reply “No You Haven’t!” Lowering my tone I continue, “I’m just saying… you might want to put someone else on the rental.” The roar, weaker, but still detectable, “I will be fine to drive!”. I walk to my desk and continue working. Ten minutes later, in a tone of quiet defeat he states, “Well, maybe we can put Lynn on the rental, too…pause….And she can drive the car”.

I have so many mixed emotions. I am relieved that he is not attempting to drive to the Shore. At the same time my heart hurts for him. The lion is aging and I don’t want him to. And I am not in the mood to be told that this is the nature of things. The “great circle of life” is for others. It is not for my Dad. Intellectually, I know that we are only here for a brief moment. But at this moment, this slice of time, a million miles separate my heart from my brain. Placing a hand over my chest, my heart hurts for him and for me.

Dad’s mane is balding, his teeth are chewed down and stained, his breathing is labored after walking a short distance, his eyesight is gone in one eye and he takes a pharmacy of pills on a daily basis. These are tangible signs of the aging lion. I see it with my eyes, even if the little girl in me wants to deny it.

There are snatches of time, where reality hits harder than normal. It is like the pace of life has ratcheted up a notch and his footing is not as steady, not as strong as it had once been. Those days of clarity make me wish there was many more years with the of my childhood. The lion who would wrestle with us as children, gave piggy back rides to his grandchildren and would even stand on his head to make them roll on the floor with laughter.

Dad turns 80 this Friday. It is a celebration of the lion that still roars, laughs and loves me.

Peace,

JaneEllen

Rooster or Tiger?

The word humility has been buzzing around my head like an annoying fly. For the last two weeks I have come across this word through my readings and in the sermons at church. God must be sending me a message. And like most of my messages from God, it takes more than one "mailing" to get through to me. God, I hear you – humility….now I have to decipher the code. As everyone knows, Jesus spoke in code, aka parables, so why would his Father be any different???

Humility is defined as absence of pride or self-assertion, according to Webster’s. Well there’s a double whammy. While I am not a boastful person, I do have a strong sense of pride. My pride is bundle together with my possessions, one of which is the my house. I never realized, until I moved in with my folks, how much value I placed on my house. Just as a job is one facet of my identity, so is my house. I had supported myself and my girls in my house for seven years. I had made improvements to the house. Many more were needed, but college tuition was looming over the house, causing me to shift priorities.

Yet, I was proud of the home I created for my girls and myself. It was our house. And now, I don’t have a house – well, as soon as it is sold, anyway. I would have been the first person to say that I don’t attach emotions to my house. But I do! Pride is in the front of the emotion line.

While I am not homeless, I find it necessary to tell people that my parents asked me to move in with them. This is quickly followed by: my mother has Alzheimer’s; my dad has spent seven of his nine lives; they need help with dinner, shopping, dr. appointments, yada, yada, yada…. I am clever in how I do this, weaving this "confession" into the conversation, making it nearly impossible to detect any boasting or pride. After all, I don’t want people to think that I am one of those single moms who has to move back home with her parents to support her kids. No, not me!! And the nod of sympathy for me, is just a little extra built-in perk. I am such a fraud!

I assert my pride at every opportunity. Oh yea, did you catch the "assert" in that statement? Part two of humility is the lack of self-assertion. This lack is not referring to allowing people to take your rights or not speaking up for yourself. No, this is a matter of puffing out your feathers like a rooster strutting in front hens.

Now that I have figured out how un-humble I am, how does this tie in with taking care of Mom???

I have been gnawing on this for a while, looking at it from different angles. Growing old, with or without dementia, just plain sucks, at times. Aging can be a limiting process where one can not drive at night, arthritis may stiffen the limbs or fingers, movement is restricted, aches and pains once ignored are now a constant reminder of an old injury. I know there are benefits from aging, too: wisdom, inner peace, joy of grand parenting, retirement. At this point, Mom’s joys are diminished by her dementia.

This is where humility, on my part, comes in. The verb form, humiliate, is a hungry tiger ready to pounce at any opportunity. When your mind no longer performs as it should, humiliation can occur on a regular basis. It is hard, oh so hard, not to scream when Mom asks me for the zillionth time about dinner, or where one of the girls is staying for the night, or when I am coming to the beach this summer, or any other item that pops into her head.

To scream at her, to remind her how she has asked the same question over and over, is a form of humiliation. Mom’s core spirit is humiliated if I hold up the dementia mirror to her. That is not loving. That is not honoring her. That is revenge for taking care of her. And that is not where my heart is. Or rather that is not where I want my heart to be. If I go to that place on a regular basis, then I will not like who I see when I turn the mirror on myself.

I have read books where people take care of others with debilitating conditions. In each case, the author writes how he/she has become a more humble person because of the experience. I am beginning to see how this happens. Watching Mom struggle with the loss of cognition, memory, and some day, basic functions is humbling in and of itself. How I love her while she travels down the path of Alzheimer’s is my ongoing lesson in humility.

Humility….Well God, is this the message? Or part of the message? Or am I completely missing Your message? Well if I have missed the mark, I have no doubt that there will be several more encores on "humility". One thing I have learned about God is that He never gives up. He just keeps knocking, until I finally open the door.

Peace,

JaneEllen