Life's Really Worth Living

as we age, many changes occur, not only in our bodies but also in our lifestyles and relationships with others.  i think of my wife's mother.  she went from living outside of town on a farm of eighty acres to a house on a typical lot in the city.  next she gave up her house and moved into a small guest house in our backyard.  at the insistence of her eldest daughter, she left her little house on our property and moved into a shared room in a nursing home, a room not really big enough for one person, much less two.  there she lived until she broke her hip and died recovering from surgery in the hospital.  her world became progressively smaller through the passing years.  her story is not an unusual one.

my father's life was somewhat the same.  after my mother died, he lived in their home on a large one-acre lot in town until he remarried and moved out in the country to his new wife's home.  when she was afflicted with dementia, they moved into a small apartment in an assisted living facility several hundred miles away from her home.  this move was made because her children wanted her to be near them in the neighboring state where they lived.  his world had become smaller, like that of my mother-in-law.

we see this pattern repeated in the lives of many people as they age.  i often think how much simpler life would be for my wife and i if we didn't have a good-sized house and yard to care for.  then i look around at the many things around me that remind me of places we have traveled or that connect us to our parents and grandparents.  many of these things would have to be given up if we down-sized.  life might be easier if we made our surroundings smaller, but would life be as rich and happy?  i know that if my wife were to die, i wouldn't be able to care for our home on my own.  i wonder what i would do under those circumstances.  she has said repeatedly that she wouldn't be able to manage without me, and i suspect the same would be true for me.  at that point, whichever of us survives would be forced to make some difficult choices, just as our parents did.

old age often forces us to give up control over our lives and makes us dependent on others.  sometimes it is our children or other relatives on whom we must rely, sometimes it is the staff in a facility for older people.  we struggle to maintain our independence for as long as we can, but, in the end, we frequently return to the state in which we came into the world as we rely on others to take care of us.  in this way, there is an arc to life.  we enter life as infants who must be fed and clothed by others, and many of us leave this life being fed and dressed by others.

may we live life to the fullest regardless of our circumstances.  may we be grateful to those who help us as continue down the path.  may we not become bitter when we are no longer able to live independently in our own homes and must rely on the kindness of others.  may we look back on lives well lived and rejoice in the happiness we have experienced.  shalom.