How Low Can You Go?

Low.

That's how things are today.

Remember limbo? It's the game in which contestants compete by seeing who can bend backwards lower and lower, while passing under the limbo pole without touching it. On each consecutive turn the pole is reset and the players bend lower and lower, seeing just how low they can go. The winner, of, course, is the one passing under the bar at the lowest setting.

Except in aging, the lowest of  the low isn't the winner.

I met a man recently who shared a family story with me. His mother and grandmother were at church. His mom noticed her mother's glasses had fallen off and when she reached over to help her  mother slip them back on, she realized that her mother was not breathing.  Just like that, his grandmother had thrown off the mortal coil and was walking the streets of gold.

I'd say, she went out by touching that limbo pole on it's highest setting. There was only a tiny bit of bending required of her.

My hope was, that when mom's time came (as it will for all of us), that it would come with a minimum of bending. Not so. Today she is shimmying under a pretty low pole.

Mom's death felt imminent three weeks ago.  It IS a miracle she's alive. We, my family and my sister's family, and a few good friends, have enjoyed some beautiful time together while she mends, first at Duke, now  in Rehab. Yesterday, in fact was a great day. She walked 40 feet, relaxed and enjoyed her day. I read to her and we watched TV together and she seemed clear and strong.

But a night without sleep (as reported by the staff ) has left her in a bad way. I've seen this situation on several days since her "event" at Duke and am learning from staff, from PT, from OT, that bad days just happen. Mom seemed alert when I entered her room this morning, eating her breakfast, but we she called me "God" instead of  "Jackie", I knew we were in trouble. I've learned that when she doesn't sleep, she cries out to God. It's as if her faith is a pearl, broken free of the knotty grey oyster shell that represents the non-essential parts of who she is.

A few nights ago she prayed out to God for someone to come in her room with her. When the CNA entered, mom praised God for sending her an angel and entreated her to sit, while she went to sleep. The CNA sat.

The other thing that happens on a bad day is mom's arms and legs tremble. This is new since her hospital event too, and I have come to understand that it is due to fatigue and/or age related. (Or as mom would say caused by A-G-E.) It's tough to see and confusing to mom. "I don't know why I'm trembling?"  Thankfully, it passes generally  in a few minutes.

And then there's "her settee." Yep, my mom won't say bottom, or heinie, or buttocks, or butt, or fanny or ass. It's  always "her settee." She just can't get it comfortable. She shifts and twists and she stands and sits down again. We adjust pillows and she pushes herself up in the chair. On these days, she has no tolerance for the discomfort of her settee and no memory that she and I did the dance of trying to resettle her just 10 minutes ago. (If only my fitbit tracked the number of times I hopped out of my chair.) She desperately wants to snooze and is most comfortable sitting forward on the edge of the chair, which leaves her in danger of falling on her face.  So I wake her and we try again to find a good position.

So this Crying Out to God/Trembling/Can't Get Comfortable is for now her low limbo setting. I certainly know the bar could be set lower. I wouldn't say Mom is suffering, exactly, but as she puts it, "It's hard." On days like today, Mom is bending over backwards and barely missing the pole. I ache for her.

But God is still teaching lessons in the midst of this turmoil. Mom's faith, that brilliant pearl, shines through in the midst of her troubles. That on her journey, on days good and bad, she knows she is not alone. She knows she can cry out to  God for mercy and strength. That all her days of worship, of reading her Bible, of sharing her faith has left such a deep and abiding faith that in the midst of physical pain, confusion, and decline, she can still draw sweet water from the depth of a bottomless font to quench her thirst.

The trembling is a reminder that our bodies tire. They stumble and stall. But Mom's body, at 92, has carried Mom on a glorious journey, a life rich and full. We wouldn't expect 92 years of service out of a Chevy or even a John Deere. That her fragile, human body has given her this life is a thing to celebrate.That still it strives to carry her forward into the future is astonishing. She walks a little further each day. A step at a time.

And she can't get comfortable. Isn't that the condition of life? Is there ever a time when we truly are comfortable? Whether with our looks, our bodies, our marriage, our children, our politics, our faith, there will always be something, somewhere, that is an irritant. Something that distracts us from our  purpose. Something that makes us lose sight of who we are and where we are going. Discomfort is the catalyst to change, to make the best of our moment in an institutional recliner or to make best of our broken world.

So today mom is leaning back hard. But tonight, through the mysterious state that is sleep, her limbo bar will likely be reset. And I hoping, and I'm praying, that tomorrow is an easy limbo day with the pole set so high, so that she can slip right under it with a wink and a smile and enjoy this life on earth another day.

Reading for Content

The Bibliophile Gene is clearly inherited. To be a bibliophile is to be passionate about books, to love to read between the endsheets and between the lines. To be enchanted by the touch, the smell, the heft and size of a book.

I have the Bibliophile Gene. It came twisted in the spine of my mother's DNA. My sister has it, too. I've passed it down to my sons, particularly my younger son, who, like me, does not leave the house without a book and a spare, or maybe, two, because, well, you never know when you might need a book.

My mom inherited her copy of the Gene from her father. She dusted off a memory this morning, ensconced in her hospital bed. Her voice is tremulous but sure. When she was eleven years old, Gone with the Wind was published and she and her dad shared a copy, reading in tandem. He would read when she was at school. When she returned home at the end of the day, he would urge her to "hurry up and read", threatening to reveal what happened next if she didn't catch up to him!

In our rich, inner book lives, "what happens next" is the driving force behind reading tomes good and bad. Some of us peek at the ending, relaxed and knowing how things turne out are ready to read the book to the endpage. Some of us consider that heresy and shudder at the thought.

But life is different. How we wish we could simply flip a few pages to see what happens next, but the denouements are veiled from us as surely as a widow's tear-stained face.

So for today, I read aloud to Mom, page by page, as I follow her story, day by day. I look for clues as to how the story ends, as surely as if I am reading the best of mysteries, pouring over red herrings and likely missing major tip offs  Mom,  tucked up in blankets to ward off the institutional chill, listens as I read to her.  Her eyes are bright as pennies as she soaks up the short essays by Rick Bragg. Like a toddler at bedtime, she insists on one  more. The writing is full of southern lore and the life she has known: gardens, front porches, lightening bugs, family, church, kitchens, and kindness, all chapters of her own storied life.

I slow my reading down and fully taste each word as I find a pace and volume suitable for a hard-of-hearing 92 year old. I live in the space of that sentence, striving to admire it's shape, it's form, it's presence, rather than racing to completion. One day this story will reach it's end and I won't be able to read it again. But, oh, the Author must be so proud of how this one turned out!

Mom's Story:  https://clyp.it/ymlvcmok


For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12