Honoring Mom and Dad

I just got back from spending a week with my parents. Dad needed someone to care for Mom while he went in for cataract surgery. The surgery went well. Dad was awake and watched the whole thing — but that is a story for a different time.

Mom had a stoke several years ago which left her with the mental capacity of a four-year-old and the attitude of a two-year-old. At least that's the way things were about a year ago when I saw her last. Mom has now regressed from being able to speak short sentences back to chirps, coos, and other vocalizations which only Dad can interpret. She DID eat everything I cooked during the week, which was a good thing. She even licked the bowl of black bean soup clean and ate all the vegetables — even the cooked turnips — in the venison stew.

Dad is as healthy as ever. One thing he never gets to do is go outside for any length of time. Leaving my sister to take care of Mom, Dad took the rest of us on a hike into the woods. I am a little ashamed to admit that I had trouble keeping up with an 88-year-old man. We hiked to places I remember exploring as a kid and he showed me treasures I had never discovered — like an old Indian stone fire ring underneath a layer of leaves tucked under the canopy of towering ancient trees. There was something child-like in my father's gait, his excitement, his sense of adventure, as we wound our way through thickets following the faintest of deer trails along the edge of a wetland.

There is not much left of the Mom I knew. She sleeps a lot — even to the point of dozing off during lunch. She can't carry on much of anything resembling a conversation and needs a lot of constant attention. Dad is lonely. I can only imagine how much he thirsts for the woman he once knew — the woman he still is in love with.

One evening, my sister was holding Mom's withered hand while she reclined on the sofa resting. The rest of us carried on a typical family-news conversation. My sister was including Mom in the discussion as much as she could. At one point, Mom looked up at my sister with an angelic, although deeply wrinkled, smile and said simply, "I love you." Those were the only words I heard her speak all week.

With Mom having one foot in the here-and-now and the other in some other perhaps eternal place, I guess I can't ask for anything better than that. Those magical three words are all we need to hear some times.

The Fifth Commandment: Honor our parents that we may live long in the land. I always used to think that commandment was for children. But now, as I seek ways to honor my parents in their old age, I find this commandment is meant more for me now than ever before. Perhaps this was what God had in mind all along.