Everlasting Place - Golden years: a blog about the elderly

It's never too late to become heaven-bound

12/4/2019

I normally attend a number of funerals each year – no surprise, considering both my age and the time I spend with elderly friends at the nursing home. But what makes some of these events extra special is their reminder that it’s never too late to receive Christ as one’s personal Savior.

In particular, a trio of friends who died over the last 15 months had three eternally significant traits in common.

First, each had a stunning story of a late-in-life conversion. All had been life-long church-goers, although their denominations differed. But all received Christ as Savior long after the time that people are ordinarily saved, according to conventional wisdom. The youngest at the time of conversion was 81; the oldest, 98.

Second, they each had amazing wisdom to share, even though their Christian walks had been relatively brief. I suppose that’s partly because they had time to think about the things of God, and the things of eternity. Just as important, they had decades of life experiences to ponder anew, this time with eternal eyes – including heart-breaking experiences that, after all, led them to this place, and this time, where they would finally meet the Savior and accept His free offer of a heavenly forever.

Third, each of these aged saints had beatific expressions in this life. And while I know that those well-worn visages probably didn’t go with them to heaven, I enjoy imagining that they did – and envisioning how rapturous each one would have looked to have come face to face, at long last, with the One who died for them. In fact, my heart leaps each time I picture one of them experiencing such unfathomable joy, and in turn imagining what it will be like when I join them, one happy day.

What a blessing it is to get to know these elderly brothers and sisters in Christ!

Gratitude is an attitude

11/26/2019

For way too many of us, Thanksgiving is no longer a day set aside to give thanks to our Creator for all His blessings. Instead, it has become a distraction, a family-, food- and football-filled way to forget all about Him.

If that sounds a little too familiar to you, take a few minutes to listen to Chris Carrillo's reflections on this great American tradition. It's the message he delivered to the folks at Care-age of Brookfield this past Sunday, and it's a doozy of a wake-up call:

If you're reading this via email, please click on the headline above to be taken to the audio file. Then, if you can't get enough of our preacher's messages, visit our Messages from Chris Carrillo page.

When will you consider yourself old?

11/21/2019

"I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am."
-- Francis Bacon

English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author Francis Bacon was only 65 when he died in 1626. So we'll never know if he would have been singing the same tune in his 70s, 80s or 90s.

But many of us sharing his philosophy will have the chance to find out. The average life expectancy in the U.S. is just a shade under 79 years right now. If we live that long, will we insist that old age begins at 93?

Most of my nursing-home friends already consider themselves old. Though they're almost all widows or widowers, and miss their late spouses terribly, I don't know that many of them regret their age. Most seem to be at peace with it, and ready to move on to their heavenly eternities; the only part they're dreading is the actual act of dying.

It's an attitude that rubs off on you if you spend much time with them. Which is another great reason for visiting elderly nursing-home residents just as often as you can. As inevitable as aging is, who doesn't want to be able to greet yet another birthday with peace and even joy?

What a gift!

11/12/2019

Two years ago, I received a Christmas gift that may be the most brilliant yet--a gift that was made possible by a particularly loving and thoughtful relative of my dear friend Wilma.

Here’s the scoop--only the names have been changed.

A recently retired resident of the American southwest, Felicity is an absolute artist when it comes to hand-crafting greeting cards of all kinds, from birthday and Christmas cards to “Thinking of You” notes. And she keeps her elderly Aunt Wilma well stocked with a lovely array of these cards, complete with matching envelopes. In fact, she sends Wilma a large box of handmade cards each year around Thanksgiving, for Christmas greetings as well as general correspondence well into the new year.

But Felicity encloses more than cards and envelopes in her Thanksgiving box. She also includes seasonless handmade gift bags, each containing festive tissue paper, each adorned with colorful decorations and an elaborate “Thank You,” and each bearing a tiny envelope and notecard for her aunt to personalize. This, in fact, was the brilliant present Wilma gave me--one of these pretty gift bags with a warm handwritten note and a selection of gorgeous handmade cards.

The point being, of course, that Felicity not only fuels her aunt’s letter-writing activities at Christmas and throughout the year, but also enables Wilma to share these unique cards with her friends whenever the occasion warrants.

It’s far from the only way that Felicity shows her love to her favorite aunt. But it certainly is one of the most practical and memorable. It’s also one of the most highly coveted, not only by Wilma, but also by all her friends who are fortunate enough to receive one of these special gifts!

The second kindest thing you can do for your loved ones

11/6/2019

After decades of hanging out with nursing-home residents and their families, I've come to the conclusion that the second nicest thing we can do for our loved ones is to preplan our funerals.

I have to admit that, as an accomplished expert in denying reality, I did not support my own mother in this effort almost two decades ago. She was perfectly fine. She was not going anywhere. She couldn't possibly die; I needed her. How dare she even mention the word funeral? SHUT UP! I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT! I WON'T TALK ABOUT IT!

She insisted that I would one day thank her, insisted too that I join her for a chat with the local funeral director who was making the rounds at her nursing home. I finally agreed, wanting to make sure he didn't pull a fast one on her. So one autumn afternoon, the three of us sat at a little round table in what was then called the South Day Room. They chatted happily as they pored over catalogs of caskets together; I remained bitterly silent and watchful throughout the whole ordeal and, when they were through, made a mad dash for home and a good long cry.

HOW COULD SHE HAVE PUT ME THROUGH THAT HORRIFIC HOUR? HOW COULD SHE BE SO HATEFUL?

As it turned out, she was as right about this as she had been about everything else we'd ever disagreed on. When the time came -- when she actually did the unthinkable and died on me -- I didn't have to make a single decision about her funeral beyond agreeing on the date and time. She had taken care of everything.

What a gift it was, to be free to grieve, free to launch my inquiry into the possibility that she still existed somewhere out there.

In the end, preplanning her funeral turned out to be the second kindest thing my mom ever did for me.

But she also did something even more wonderful for me, something of eternal proportions. And that was telling me again and again, throughout our lives together, where I would find her once she departed this world.

That, in fact, is the kindest thing any of us can do for our loved ones: To conduct the research, to determine once and for all where we will be spending eternity, and to let them know exactly how to find us.

It's probably best to tell them while we're still alive and kicking, so we can answer all their questions about our final destination, such as how they themselves can get there. But it never hurts to leave them a note.

My mother did both, and I am eternally grateful -- to her, for making the effort, and to our Creator, for giving me the kind of mom I couldn't bear to lose for all eternity.

"It is written"

10/29/2019

I heard a number of excellent comments following our October Christian Music Hour at Care-age of Brookfield – none more enthusiastic than the review that my dear friend C. gave the message delivered by our own Chris Carrillo, fearless proclaimer of the word of God.

“Chris was on fire today,” C. raved. “I loved it. I was hanging on his every word!”

With good reason: In a message entitled “It is written,” Chris showed us how Jesus used Scripture to battle Satan; how the world twists the word of God to attack us for trusting in and obeying Him; and how the never-changing Jesus is both God incarnate, and the only way to heaven.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen to this powerful message, and to share it with others.

If you’re reading this via email, please click on the title above to be taken to the audio file. And if you’d like to hear more from this wonderful preacher, be sure to check out our Messages from Chris Carrillo page.

All you need is hope

10/23/2019

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we Christians do not “sorrow as [do] others who have no hope.” And of course, when he penned these words in what would become 1 Thessalonians 4:13, the apostle Paul was speaking of biblical hope, which is to say not “wishful thinking” but “confident expectation.” In fact, we can rejoice in even the most unhappy circumstances, because we know that this life is the blink of an eye and that we’ll be spending all eternity in heavenly bliss.

That’s precisely what 86-year-old heroine Sadie came to understand in the novel The Song of Sadie Sparrow. Sure, her husband Ed had died years earlier, and she was hardly a priority for her daughter Dana, and she would be spending what was left of this life in a nursing home. But it was an awfully nice nursing home. A fun Activities Assistant named Meg was about to interview her for a mini-biography. And whenever she thought to turn her eyes upon Jesus, she could scarcely contain her joy.

So the Beatles were wrong. Love is nice. But all we really need is hope, as this excerpt from Sadie’s story demonstrates.

Meg’s questions were definitely intriguing.

That night after dinner—even though tablemate Gladys managed to find fault with the carrots and onions, it had been a delicious meal of impossibly tender pot roast and cornbread muffins—Sadie wheeled herself to the built-in desk in her room, flipped on the lamp, and pulled her best pen and a few sheets of stationery out of the drawer. No notes were needed for the “who, what, where and when” queries of “Part One, The Basics”; but “Part Two, Beyond the Basics” included a number of questions deserving some thought, and Sadie didn’t want to attempt to answer them off-the-cuff. Someone—okay, her daughter Dana Sparrow Maxwell, to be precise—might one day read Meg’s report on Sadie’s life, and it might be Sadie’s last opportunity to impact a life that had gone tearing down the wrong path, the path to what Sadie called “dead-end careerdom.”

The first of these questions was pretty broad. “Why do you live here now?”

Sadie started jotting down the answers in her arthritic hand.

1. Because I have heart failure and need help. Can’t even safely transfer into bed or onto the toilet on my own and that means the retirement home won’t have me anymore.

2. Because living with my daughter was not an option. Her plate is plenty full without adding a helpless old mother to her duties.

She sat back and thought for a moment. Does that sound pathetic? Dana did not suffer whiners gladly. Imagining the eye rolling these thoughts would provoke, Sadie crossed out her second point and substituted a more positive answer:

2 . Because I wanted to live with people my own age, with the same values and experiences and hope for the future.

She liked that. It was true, Dana would like it, and it might lead to an interesting conversation with Meg.

3. Because it’s a beautiful facility with a dedicated staff and my daughter made sure the bill will be paid to make up for otherwise ignoring me.

Definitely whiney.

Sadie put a period after “staff” and crossed out the rest, sighing. It was pathetic that she was framing her answers in order to avoid irritating her so-often-irritable daughter—especially since said daughter would most likely not see her answers until she was cleaning out this room after the funeral (an event which Dana would probably greet with both relief and more irritation, since it would no doubt interfere with some important business meeting).

Still, Sadie’s goal here was to plant seeds with eternal impact, and that meant she’d have to set aside all her personal, earthly complaints. She wanted Dana to put down the biography of Sadie Sparrow thinking, “What a woman! I want to be just like her, and spend all eternity with her! How can I be sure of it?”

Sadie laughed. Okay, then, she’d settle for a “Gee, she wasn’t nearly as stupid as I thought. Maybe there’s something to this eternity business after all . . .”

That reminded her of a favorite song, and she started singing it in her wobbly old voice: “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.”

She looked over the rest of Meg’s questions and decided to call it a night. She was tired, and she still had some time to frame her answers before their meeting on Friday. She tidied up the desk and closed her eyes, letting her thoughts drift heavenward on the wings of the old hymn.

“Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling ‘O sinner, come home.’”

The best rendition of “Softly and Tenderly” she’d ever heard was Tennessee Ernie Ford’s. He had gone on ahead long ago, she knew, not too long after Ed.

“Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised, promised for you, and for me.”

She wondered if they had met in heaven, maybe had even sung some hymns together. Ed had always been a big fan of Tennessee Ernie’s deep-as-the-ocean bass.

“Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon—pardon for you and for me.”

Thinking of Ed and Tennessee together was surprisingly comforting. And one day, she would join them.

Which reminded her of another old favorite of Ed’s.

“Just over in the glory land,” she sang, scrunching up her face just like a Spirit-led gospel singer,

“I’ll join the happy angel band. Just over in the glory land!”

She was smiling now, almost giddy at the idea of heaven and glory and seeing Ed again.

But oh, in the meantime, it was good to be alive!

As the fog rolls in

10/15/2019

If you have yet to walk from one room to the next and forget why you made this little journey, just wait: It happens more and more often as we age, along with letting slip little things like the day of the week or an appointment with a hairdresser or insurance agent.

For a time, anyway, you’ll be able to chuckle over these brain freezes with your family and friends; they’re all experiencing the same thing, after all.

But one day, if you live long enough, you may no longer be able to laugh it off. You may find yourself forgetting the necessities, like taking your medication or eating a meal. You may begin to wander, clueless about your destination and maybe even your location. Familiar landmarks might become unfamiliar; for a moment, you may forget how to get home. And when you are able to shake it off – as if you really can shake it off yourself – the fear may set in.

Some time ago, I read And Have Not Love (Harper and Brothers, 1954), another amazing novel by the late Anne Parrish. In it, she describes the early stages of this phenomenon in the 90-year-old heroine Clara:

“Sometimes she grew confused; was it today, or yesterday? Was it spring, or fall? She would lose her place in life for a moment, and be dizzy, and a little frightened. Now, gazing at the white moon, everything became snow and winter, and she was back in a night when her friends had gone to bed, and would not come out to make merry with her, although she called under their windows, the sleigh bells calling with her, and the moon shone bright as day.

“For a moment, the moon clung to the rim of the horizon, then floated free, filling the night with beauty and infinite loneliness, bringing Clara back to the present. She could do nothing, call no one. There was no one to look at her and distract her. No voice so loved that it could never fail her spoke to her from the past.”

So what are we to do when we begin to see the signs of such deterioration in a friend or loved one? The answer – the only answer -- can be found in the title of this novel, drawn from the apostle Paul’s great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13:

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”

The best thing we can do for those sinking into dementia is to wrap them in agape love – selfless and sacrificial love that has nothing to do with emotions and everything to do with serving God. Allow them to see us as protectors, as people who will care for them even as they forget our names and our relationships to them. Help them to feel safe whenever our eyes meet theirs.

And then? Be there. Make them a priority. Years ago, the daughter of a friend of mine with MS said it was easy to tell who her family’s real friends were. “They’re the ones who just show up,” she explained from her home six hours away. “They mean the world to us. And most important, they mean the world to Mom.”

Have any special interests or skills?

10/8/2019

It's now been three years since my elderly friend "Gisela" died at the nursing home where I hang out, and I still think of her often. Which may seem a little strange, since in most ways, she was just like many of her neighbors – sometimes cheerful and loving, sometimes lonely and cross, sometimes suffering greatly from various aches and pains, occasionally feeling absolutely terrific.

But Gisela was unusual in some important ways. Perhaps most notably, she had immigrated to the U.S. from Germany only a few decades earlier and her English was still pretty tough to interpret. What's more, she could often be found with her nose buried in her Bible, searching for edification and consolation--an increasingly rare sight these days. But it wasn’t just any Bible she turned to. Hers was rendered in German, in the old gothic typeface that, like so many other precious remnants of the past, is going to its grave along with today’s elderly Germans.

I visited Gisela weekly for several years, trying my best to converse with her about the things of this world and the next. But communicating with her was always a struggle for me. I tried to resurrect my self-taught German from 40 years ago, with little success; once we’d shared a few laughs over “wo ist die Bibliothek?” and chuckled over my lame attempts to read her Bible aloud, I didn’t have much else to contribute. Sometimes we’d just give up, sitting quietly or perhaps singing one of the hymns she’d mastered in English.

And then, one lovely fall day, along came a new volunteer who was also a native German. Elderly herself, “Ursula” was a wonder, friendly and laughing and oh, so eager to forge a friendship with Gisela.

They had a flurry of lively visits together, chattering away about the old country – at least, I assume that was their primary topic, because I’d hear the names of German cities and towns being bandied about. And through those weeks, Gisela seemed as happy as I’d ever known her to be.

But then, life happened. Ursula’s own health was failing, and the visits stopped. Gisela clearly missed her friend. She fell into a gloom that not even my pathetic attempts at conversational German could dispel. And a few months later, she went on home to her Lord and Savior.

The moral of this story?

Please, if you have some interest or skill that might make a shut-in’s day, week or year, don’t keep it to yourself. For instance, if you:

Speak a foreign language
Excel at mending clothing while you chat
Love a good game of bridge or Scrabble
Enjoy scrapbooking or writing letters
Are fond of organizing a chatty coffee or lemonade klatsch
Play old songs (especially hymns) on the piano or guitar
Like to read aloud, whether it's books or magazines or, best of all, the Bible
Pray unceasingly, especially for other people
Think it's fun to teach others how to crochet or knit
Find nothing more satisfying than re-organizing the contents of drawers or closets
Are quite an expert amateur birder with a homemade slide show that no one your age is interested in seeing
Have any of a hundred other special skills or interests that an old lady or old man might appreciate

Don't wait another day! Call a few nearby nursing-home Activities Directors to find out if they have any residents whom you could delight. And even if they don’t have such a need right now, leave your name and number so they can find you in the future, should that situation change.

A girlfriend who volunteers at a rural memory-care center told me that, in this little facility, she has found her purpose in life. Perhaps you can, too, simply by sharing whatever makes you happy with a new elderly friend or two.

"Despicable Me"

10/1/2019

Are you a fan of today’s animated movies? If so, you’re going to love the most recent Bible message from Chris Carrillo, Preacher Extraordinaire for our monthly Christian Music Hour at Care-age of Brookfield. The reason? He takes as his jumping-off point the smash hit “Despicable Me,” using it to illuminate key passages from Mark 12 and Matthew 8 and 9. But even if you’re not a fan of “Despicable Me” (or if your taste, like mine, runs more towards “Bambi” and “Lady and the Tramp”), I think you’ll love the parallels and conclusions that Chris draws from this popular 2010 cartoon.

No spoilers here; you’ll have to listen yourself:

If you're reading this via email, click on the headline above to be taken to the original post, complete with audio. And if you'd like to hear more from Chris, please visit our Messages from Chris Carrillo page.