Family Squeeze

by Phil Callaway

  Dad seemed to notice my raised eyebrows, so he voiced the question again: “Do you have any books on doubt?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Uh…is it for a research project?”

  “It’s for me,” he said, unashamed.

  Ever since I can remember, Dad has turned to books for comfort and guidance. Our house was filled with them. They lined the hallways and bedrooms and counters and bathrooms. We weren’t big on artwork, saving our money for bookshelves instead. Winter evenings were spent playing ice hockey and rarely concluded without the benediction of a good book.

  Favorite books of my childhood are in my study now, their covers torn, the pages bent. After Dad’s request, I ran my fingers along the shelves. Tom Sawyer. Robinson Crusoe. Arabian Nights. As a child I wished I could add pages to these books; they were always too short. The happy endings were like discovering a quarter in your piece of birthday cake, a bonus to an already breathtaking day.

  Is my father wondering if a happy ending can be written into his story? After all, who pens a tale where the hero ends up old, forgetful, and forgotten, reliant on others for everything? For the majority, old age is the most difficult chapter, with Doubt and Fear playing the lead roles. We spend our lives writing our story but one day realize that no one gets out of life alive. That the only way out is the way of trust.

  What shall I say to my father?

  In Bible college I learned all the standard responses to doubt, but I’ve never encountered it in someone so near. Frederick Buechner calls doubt the “ants in the pants of faith.” It’s like the stinging nettle on our golf course. You go looking for your lost ball, and this pesky plant haunts you for the rest of the round, requiring that you spend more time scratching than slicing golf balls. But sometimes it’s the nettle that assures you you’re alive; that breeds stubborn determination to find answers, to press on.

  In my study, I managed to locate two good books on the topic. Dad thanked me for them, but a few days later when the subject arose, he didn’t mention the books. Instead, he gave me a verse he had handwritten on a piece of paper and was carrying in his pocket. A verse from Psalm 23:

  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever, (KJV)

  One word was underlined: surely.

  David did not say, “You know, it is quite likely that goodness and mercy may possibly, perhaps, probably, if I’m really lucky, follow me around for a week or two.”

  No, the verse speaks with assurance that God’s goodness will provide, that His mercy will pardon. Forever.

  Amid the unnerving changes in his life, Dad needed the promise of a changeless God. With the uncertainty of where he would live, he needed a reminder of his heavenly home. With his memory beginning to fail, he found comfort in meditating on the One “with whom there is never the slightest variation or shadow of inconsistency” (James 1:17, Phillips).

  And God didn’t just use that verse. He used the dog, too.

  One June evening we were lounging on our covered deck, watching the sky change color in the west. Ragged edges of black appeared over the Rockies, growled a warning, and started their slow march toward us. Mojo was slumped on Grandpa’s lap, but once the clouds rattled with thunder, she began to shake like she had one paw in a light socket.

  “It’ll be okay,” Dad whispered, patting her Ewok head reassuringly. But she wouldn’t be comforted. “I’ve got you, don’t worry,” he murmured, massaging her shoulders. But she wouldn’t listen. An irrational fear had gripped her tiny body. She trembled. She shook. She panted. And as the clouds tumbled closer and the rain touched down, she leaped from his lap, darted under a wheelbarrow, and refused to come out.

  “Come here, Moje,” Dad beckoned, leaning forward. “Don’t be silly. It’s gonna be okay.”

  I couldn’t resist saying something. “So do you think God feels a little like we do right now?” I thought of the bumblebees I kept in jars without lids when I was a child. “Trying to comfort poor dumb, frightened creatures who can’t understand what’s going on? Do you think He’s trying to tell us to trust Him? That’s it’s all right?”

  As Dad sat talking to the wheelbarrow, the storm ended and the dog emerged from her hiding place, creeping across the grass and back onto his lap. A smile lit up his face.

  I know for a fact that the doubts lingered and the questions remained unanswered. But they seemed to fade into insignificance that night as he massaged Mojo’s shoulders, perhaps thinking of a heavenly Father who holds us in His arms amid life’s storms, whispering, “Don’t be silly, My child. It’s gonna be okay.”

  Keep changing. When you’re

  through changing, you’re through.

  BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON

  My mother, a homemaker and author, seamstress and personal chef for five, is taking her leave of this earth in a bedroom twenty feet from ours in the suite we built during easier times. Beyond her window lies the eastern sky, from which numerous preachers promised Christ would return one glad morning.

  “I never thought I’d live to be this old,” she whispers as I rub her feet—feet that are colder and smaller than I remember them. Dying people have no reason to be less than honest. And she insists she is dying, that she doesn’t want to go on, that she simply won’t stand for it.

  “We were told the Rapture would happen during the war,” she frowns. “Then they said we wouldn’t live to have children. That the end of the world was near. That we’d never see the year 2000. Now I wonder what was true and what wasn’t.”

  I smile and shake my head. I must have missed the Bible college class when they told us what to do when your aging mother embraces agnosticism. Mom was forever the woman of faith. Quick with a Bible verse. She was the one who brought Old Testament stories to life for me, soothing my insomnia with promises of God that I’ve clung to in some dark hours. And she spanked me. Yes, she certainly did. But her heart was never entirely in it. Her spankings were more like apologies. When she said it hurt her more than me, I believed her. And I loved her for it. I caress her hands now and wonder how they ever held the leather tightly enough to administer those timid doses. I grew up listening to these hands tickle the piano, while her soft voice sang hymns that still comfort me.

  The last few months I’ve needed that comfort. With increasing frequency, Dad has been asking questions he has always known the answers for, and Mom has been concerned about him. A few days ago in the middle of the night, she fell, leaving dark bruises on her forehead and ribs. I don’t know if she passed out, but somehow, despite the pain, she stubbornly managed to find her way through the laundry room and into our bedroom where she flipped on the light and announced that the end of the world was nigh. It was three in the morning, and it was like the angel Gabriel himself had opened the door, held a trumpet to his lips, and blasted a high C. After I ruled out the angel, I thought it was Dad playing one of his practical jokes, but there was nothing practical about it.

  “She needs to take these, and she needs bed rest,” a busy doctor told us a few hours later, his voice filled with optimism. “She should be fine.” But as the days pass, we realize that she is far from fine. Her speech has slurred, her thoughts are jumbled. It may be the medication, but whatever it is, Mom has taken a bad turn, not knowing up from down.

  And just like that, we are facing the fact that a chapter is ending, that both Mom and Dad need more care than we are capable of giving them. For a time, we hired a home-care nurse, but the folks now require twenty-four-hour care. We need to keep track of their medication, pay their bills, cook meals, and do the laundry.

  Sometimes the door is left open in the night when the temperature is below freezing. Dad is confused much of the time. One morning he tapped on my study door, though it was already open. In his hand he held a blank check. “You fill it in,” he said. “I’ll pay whatever you want to stay here.” I blinked and swallowed, wondering what to say.

  My brothers and sister and I h
uddled together, seeking wise medical, financial, and spiritual counsel. We’ve prayed so many times that the ending would be easier than this, that we wouldn’t have to pry the dog from Dad’s lap and put him in a home. But I’ve also been praying each time I travel that the house would be standing when we return. That the stove and microwave and gas fireplace would be off.

  One night I had quite an angry talk with God on my evening walk, informing Him of some things I was quite certain He had not thought of yet. It ended with me explaining that He couldn’t possibly know what it was like to shoulder the responsibilities of having to care for an aging parent, and suddenly I was silenced by the realization that Jesus was no stranger to my situation.

  What was He doing while in agony on the cross? John, the “disciple Jesus loved,” humbly tells us in chapter 19 of his gospel:

  When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Woman, he is your son.” And he said to this disciple, “She is your mother.” And from then on this disciple took her into his home, (NLT)

  As I rubbed Mom’s feet, these thoughts swirled through my mind again. While in horrible agony, Jesus was thinking of, caring for, and honoring His mother.

  Honoring our aging parents means not despising them for the “inconvenience” their age and fading health brings us. It means respecting their difficulties and shouldering their burdens. It means treasuring them and helping them and getting them a drink, as they did for us when we were whiny little kids. And sometimes it means putting them in the care of others.

  One of the most difficult things I have ever done was take the car keys from Dad. Something inside me died that day. I took the dog from his lap and wished I could go somewhere and cry for about a week.

  When I was twelve or thirteen I saw my parents wrestle through these same questions with my grandfather. In the end, I watched Dad carry his fathers small suitcase to the car and drive Grandpa to his last earthly residence: a small seniors home.

  Today a chapter ends and a new one begins, as I find myself doing the same.

  God does not comfort us to make

  us comfortable, but to make us comforters.

  JOHN HENRY JOWETT

  One reason a dog is such a comfort in tough times is that he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t second-guess your decisions or write you notes questioning your sanity. And of course there are humans who will encourage you too. Some told us of their own journey, and we took comfort in the knowledge that we were not alone, that others had walked this path before—triumphing with humor and grace. Here are three of their stories.

  In 1967, William Crozier’s dad walked out on his wife, his children, and the church he pastored. William didn’t speak to his father for years. But after he married, he knew he must make things right.

  “In the early nineties,” writes William, “Dad was run over by a little old lady in a very big car and dragged one hundred feet. Since then he has lived with a brain injury, and I have tried to honor him. Dad and I go out to lunch often. He proposes to every woman in the restaurant on the way in, and on the way out introduces me as his pastor-son who will do the ceremony. We laugh. And people who understand laugh, too.”

  William and his wife rented an apartment for his dad in a nearby town, helping him live independently for as long as he could, and when an aunt of nearly eighty was hospitalized with a stroke, they were surprised by the joy they discovered in helping her too.

  “She was coached to do exercises involving moving her lips repeatedly and making really rude noises, so that she could regain her speech,” says William. “Her room happened to face the hallway where the elevator doors opened, so we challenged her to pucker up and make noises with great enthusiasm whenever the doors to the elevators opened. Innocent people exiting the elevator were greeted with smooching sounds and even some outstanding raspberries, made all the more hilarious by the fact that she seldom remembered to put her teeth in. How she loved gumming people into hysterics! In fact, it may be part of the reason for her quick recovery.

  “More important than her sense of humor was her forgiveness of my father. She saw him at his worst forty years ago when he left and yet was so graceful to him. She wasn’t just content to talk about forgiveness; she allowed him to live in it.”

  “When my parents entered the early stages of Alzheimer’s,” recalls Katherine Dutcher, “they failed to recognize that they were in desperate need of assisted-living arrangements. On weekends my siblings and I took turns being there for them. But for five days each week they were alone, and our concern for their safety grew with each visit.

  “Hoping to convince them that they needed help, my brother Tom, a very good negotiator, explained home health-care aid and assisted living, showing them brochures and laying out the costs for the different options. Before he could finish, they became so upset he had to quit. Though Tom was the only one to say anything, Dad shook his finger at my sister and me, stating angrily, ‘You girls are no good. You are trying to kick us out of our own house. Tom is the only good one. You two are out of the will.’

  “After we left, my brother Tom teased us: ‘You’re out of the will and I’m not!’

  “Since we wanted to respect their wishes to stay in their home, we decided to hire a home health-care aide. But things went from bad to worse. I’ve never been so disappointed in you,’ Dad said, looking at me.

  “I felt hopeless and guilty and afraid. Afraid they would hurt themselves or, worse yet, hurt someone else while driving. I began to realize we could not solve this problem ourselves. And so we began to pray.

  “One morning at 2:30, the phone rang. It was one of Mom and Dad’s neighbors. Thinking he had bought the neighbor’s truck, Dad found the keys under the floor mat and drove the truck through two neighbors’ yards, over a small tree, and into a ditch. The police were finally able to get him home and settled in for the night, and the gracious neighbor assured me he wasn’t pressing charges.

  “Frightened, I called Tom so he could be there by morning. But at 7 a.m. the neighbor called again. This time Dad thought he had bought the man’s backhoe. Unable to get it started, he darted for home when the neighbor began yelling at him.

  “Knowing they were in trouble, Mom and Dad packed a suitcase and were backing out of the driveway when the police arrived. The officer seized their car keys and their drivers’ licenses, foiling their great escape.

  “God answered our prayers in a surprising way. The day of Mom and Dad’s attempted escape, Tom arrived to find that they couldn’t wait to move out of that dreadful neighborhood. After all, they couldn’t trust the neighbors.

  “Within a month we had found an assisted living home near my sisters house. It came complete with a patio where Mom could feed the birds, and a view of a wooded area where Dad could watch the deer. At last they were safe and happy.”

  Jackie Larson calls her father “the product of a poverty-stricken Depression-era home, self-educated and one of the smartest men I ever met.” But lessons learned from his own abusive father and a weakness for drinking wrought destruction in his character. “He lived a self-centered life,” writes Jackie. “Hardheaded, he could be a mean drunk, catastrophically unsuited to the task of stepfather to my half siblings. His only softening influences were his mother, his two daughters, and their children.

  “Although he paid for me to attend a Christian school and college, he remained adamant that I not preach to him, and so I kept my mention of God to little cards and notes I sometimes sent him.”

  During her final visit with her father, Jackie played the piano and sang for the residents of the nursing home in which he now lived. It was Christmastime, and she played all the carols requested, as well as a few familiar and comforting hymns.

  “Are there any final requests?” she asked.

  Her father, a lifelong agnostic, frail in his wheelchair, but still vigorous of mind at eighty-three, looked straight at her and said, “‘The Old Rugged Cross.’“

 
Startled, she played the notes and began to sing:

  On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,

  The emblem of suffering and shame;

  And I love that old cross where the dearest and best

  For a world of lost sinners was slain.

  So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,

  Till my trophies at last I lay down;

  I will cling to the old rugged cross,

  And exchange it some day for a crown.

  “As I pushed him back to his room,” Jackie remembers, “I couldn’t help wondering what those words meant to him.

  “‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I have a final request for you. For decades, you’ve told me you were agnostic. You’ve said, “Don’t bother me with your religious views.” But now that you’ve had some time to reflect on this, are you willing to consider trust in Christ? I believe we’re all sinners and only Jesus can save us through His death on the cross. I believe that He’s the only way we can be right with God and get to heaven, and that we need to accept that gift and trust in Him. Do you believe that, Dad?’

  “He looked at me with steady blue eyes. ‘More and more, kid,’ he said. ‘More and more.’

  “Dad drifted off to sleep, and the moment ended. His condition worsened rapidly, and he died not long after our visit.

  “I do not know for sure the condition of his soul. But I can’t help thinking of the day I discovered—tucked safely away in his box of chess pieces—all the Christian cards and notes I ever wrote him. And I do know that Jesus came looking for lost sheep. Perhaps He found another one in that nursing home. Perhaps this tired old lamb, weary of a life lived without communion with the Great Shepherd, approached heaven’s gate with a final request and was welcomed home.”

  The worst thing in your life may contain seeds

  us of the best. When you can see crisis as an opportunity,