When you spend much time volunteering in a nursing home, you’re bound to suffer some losses over the years – losses in the sense of temporary separation from people you’ve grown close to, who have gone on ahead to heaven. And indeed, 2017 has been a doozy for me from that standpoint. Three very good friends died unexpectedly in late winter, and another in spring. 
 
And then there was the home-going of my dearest friend Doris, at age 97.75, on October 8th.
 
Over the last almost six years, Doris and I spent a great deal of quality time together, lunching weekly with her amazing daughter, visiting and singing and jabbering, sifting through thousands of her family photos, and wrapping up nearly every Friday afternoon with a spirited scrapbooking session during which we tried to artfully arrange the best of those photos – some dating back to before the turn of the last century.
 
Being so immersed in this photographic history, I got to know Doris and her family very well over the years. I learned all about the courage of her mother Lydia, widowed at an early age; about the love and humor of her husband Frank; and about the extraordinary kindness of her mother-, father- and sister-in-law.
 
Of special note were loving characters like Uncle Gus’s wife Aunt Coddle. She insisted on hand-making young Doris’s special-occasion dresses for such events as her First Communion. These dresses weren’t exactly fashionable, as the photographic evidence demonstrates. In fact, the prospect of having to wear them out in public sent Doris to her mother in tears, hoping that she’d be told she could wear something else.

But no dice. Lydia invariably said, “Oh, I know it’s awful, Doris dear, but Aunt Coddle would be so hurt if you didn’t wear it. You’re just going to have to.” And so she did.
 
Maybe it was being raised by a mother like Lydia that gave Doris such a compassionate heart. Because in my eyes, at least, she was the epitome of the Christian woman – a doer of the word, not just a hearer (James 1:22).
 
Perhaps most telling, I never once heard her say an unkind word to anyone, or about anyone. Never. On the contrary, she always greeted staff and residents with the friendliest “Hello!” you’ve ever heard, and the brightest smile. And she often commented on what terrific people they were when they were out of earshot.
 
Nor did I ever hear her complain about anything. Not once. Not when a neighbor was ear-splittingly noisy, a staffer was cross, a fellow resident gobbled down all her chocolates, or an aide was painfully slow to respond to a call light. Not even when reflooring the hallways necessitated detours that were inconvenient for all and a trial for a 90-something woman relying on a walker; rather than complaining about it, she lauded the workers, complimenting them enthusiastically on their efforts.
 
What’s more, Doris seemed to be obsessed with your comfort, especially when you were sitting in her room. She wanted you to take the best chair. She wanted the temperature to be set at your comfort level. She wanted you to have just the right amount of the right kind of light, incandescent or fluorescent, for the task at hand.
 
The foundation of it all: a heart filled to overflowing with gratitude.
 
“I’ve had such a wonderful life,” Doris said more than once. And indeed, it was clearly a life filled with love and simple pleasures – her wonderful extended family, a relatively modest but well-built and tidy home, long lists of girlfriends who got together regularly, family vacations at rented cottages in northern Wisconsin, volunteer work at a local hospital.
 
This gratitude continued into the last years of her life. Even though her daughter made repeated efforts to persuade her mother to come live with her, Doris kindly refused. She found Care-age beautiful, loved the staff and her fellow residents, nested happily in a room filled with family photos and favorite knickknacks, appreciated the food and courtyard garden and thoroughly enjoyed the constant slate of activities, all tailored to the interests and abilities of her generation.
 
And now I wonder: If this splendid woman found so much to love about this fallen world, even while dealing with the infirmities of great old age, how do you suppose she’s finding heaven?
 
Doris was one of a kind, and I will never forget her. Happily, thanks to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that won’t ever be necessary; we’ll both be in that happy, heavenly throng, singing our hearts out in worship (and, she and I always hoped, doing so with far more beautiful voices than those we had in this life).

A visitor just reminded me of this poem, which I saw some time ago on Facebook. In my experience, it seems like the Alzheimer's patients who have the greatest peace are those whose children and friends continue to visit and love them even as the deep confusion sets in. 

Think this disease won't be an issue for you? Maybe not. But if it hasn't already impacted you in some way, chances are that it will. According to the latest statistics, at age 65 our risk of developing Alzheimer's before we die is 17% -- one in six -- for women and 9% for men (see page 22 in the linked document). And the outlook is increasingly grim as we age.   

I hope we'll each do what we can to comfort those afflicted with any form of dementia. The Lord will be pleased; after all, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress ..." (James 1:27a, NIV)

The Greek language describes at least four kinds of love:

• Storge, meaning the love of family
• Philia, which is the love of close friends
• Eros, or erotic love
• Agape, the unconditional and sacrificial love of the God who is love (1 John 4:8, 16)

 
Most of us are very familiar with the first three kinds of love, but not many of us have knowingly experienced agape. Christians see it in action when we look to the cross, meditate on what the Lord does for us day to day, and examine His promises for all eternity. But it’s rare indeed to see agape in action in the here and now.
 
Yet some of us have the privilege of witnessing it every now and then, when God shines His love through a Christian’s heart and onto those who wouldn’t seem, at least at the moment, to be very lovable.
 
It is beautiful. Breathtaking, in fact.
 
I saw it just recently at the nursing home where I hang out, during our monthly Christian Music Hour. We staffers and volunteers were a bit frazzled, running late in assembling folks in the main dining room for this hour of worship and biblical enlightenment.
 
And so I didn’t take the extra time needed to settle and reassure my dear friend D., who has in recent months become increasingly anxious and fearful; instead, I rolled her geri chair in next to Elivira, a sister in Christ who’s my age. “Please look after D., will you? If she becomes anxious, reassure her until I can get there?”
 
“Of course,” said my friend, who is herself saddled with disabling disorders that might cause lesser spirits to shrink into self-pity and bitterness.
 
We handed out the song books and finally got started. Over the course of the next hour, we worshipped the Lord through both a stirring message* and a dozen lovely hymns, from “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee” and “In the Garden” to “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” and “Be Still My Soul.”
 
Since I introduce the songs and man the audio equipment, and since we ran out of song books early on and needed to make more copies, I was preoccupied much of the time. But every time I looked D. and Elvira’s way, I saw an amazing sight: Elvira turned in her wheelchair, gazing at D., singing her heart out, the most beatific expression I’ve ever seen transforming her face into one hour-long display of agape love.
 
D. stayed calm throughout the hour, even smiling now and then. How could she not, with all that love shining her way and spilling out on everyone in the vicinity?
 
I don’t know that I’ve ever been so moved in my life.
 
Sometimes I think back on the wonders I’ve seen in my life, back in my pre-Christian days when I poured all my energy into good times and worldly pleasures. And each time I am blown away by how those pleasures pale in the light of agape love, and the transformative effect it has on those who witness it.
 
Sadly, it’s a rare sight in this world, reserved perhaps for hard places like nursing homes and prisons, places populated by people who may not seem to warrant any kind of human love, who haven’t earned it through beauty or achievement or genetic bond.
 
But there’s good news: we don’t have to go far to find such places, to experience the love of God in human hearts, possibly even to serve as a vehicle for it ourselves. These people that Jesus called “the least of these” are all around us; the genuine Christian just needs to go to them, serve them, and love them.
 
*If you’re reading this via email, please click on the title above to be taken to the original post; you can then click on the “a stirring message” link to hear it yourself.