Sixteen
years ago I stood by my father-in-law’s casket and said something like, “This
is all happening too soon. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. You were
supposed to be around for a lot more years!” He was a few days shy of reaching
his 68th birthday. His daughter and I had been married less than
twenty years. I had laughingly told people that when I decided to get married,
I went looking for a man I thought would make a great father-in-law and hoped
he would have a daughter acceptable as a wife. I found the best of both.
The
rheumatoid arthritis that destroyed his lungs came fast, silently, and ended
his life while he still had much to enjoy. My wife and I had looked forward to
many years of his grandpa role for our two sons. We were not prepared to let
him go. Now we must try to get ready to move once more through the same
process. Letting go can be a hard decision.
Last week
was a time of touring nursing homes, questioning administrators, and evaluating
what the elder generation can handle. The words were wise but not easy to take
coming from a family counselor who said, “Tom, you may want your parents to be
happy in the last years of their lives, however many that may be. But you
cannot focus on what will make them happy. You have to focus on what is best
for them. That is the way you will be the son they need you to be.”
I watched my
parents turn a farm of rocky Kentucky clay into a garden. Pop could make a
limestone outcropping produce wagons full of corn. We didn’t measure our
potatoes by the pound. We measured them in hundred pound feed sacks. My parents
were strong. In a little boy’s eyes, they would always be strong.
They aren’t
strong anymore. They have moved step by step from the farm to a house with a
garden to a small two-bedroom apartment to an assisted living facility. Now we
are looking for a nursing home that will offer skilled care when it is needed. One
of these days I will have to let them go. That will be the hardest decision of
all. I will have to do it, not because it will make anybody happy, but because
it is what is best.
It doesn’t
make it any easier that my mother-in-law has slow growing but terminal cancer.
We have to prepare to let her go as well. In none of these cases do we know
when, only that it is inevitable. We can try to think in terms of happiness,
but always it comes back to what is best.
Jesus looked
across the centuries and saw in me an older man who just wanted to be a little
boy again. The little boy could be happily ignorant of taxes and bills, cattle
prices, and tobacco poundage. His dad always had everything under control. He
could play in the winter snow, hunt arrowheads after a summer rain, and help
his mother pick strawberries eating as many as he put in the bucket.
Jesus saw
him and said, “If you are tired of carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I
will give you rest. Take the yoke I give you. Put it on you and learn from me.
I am gentle and humble, and you will find rest. This yoke is easy to bear, and
this burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 CEV) Jesus’ listeners understood. A
young, untrained ox would be teamed with an older, experienced animal. Sharing
the yoke, the younger would learn from the older. They would pull together but
the strength and experience of the older animal would make it easier for both.
Someday I
will have to let my parents go even as my wife must let her mother go.
Preparing for that time is not easy. That is the human perspective. The
spiritual view is so much better. It is not only for the best, it also offers
happiness, eternal happiness – Revelation 21:1-4.
