I recently filmed an interview with my maternal grandmother. I packed up a ton of my recording gear and took it to an extended family gathering at a lake house my grandmother has owned since before I was born, in which my family has gathered for decades. While my children were running around the house and grounds, making new memories where much of my childhood was spent, I was setting up a makeshift studio in the master bedroom. While I felt guilty for leaving my morning-sick wife hanging, the guilt of unrecorded history weighed heavier. The reality is that my grandmother is not always going to be here to tell me about my heritage. My stately matriarch is still of sharp wit and sound mind, a blessing to be sure. It is worth inconveniencing myself and my family to honor the legacy we do not even know we have. In fact, this is how one learns of one’s legacy: by receiving the stories that made us who we are.
Many things struck me from our time together: The memory of her sitting with her grandparents in silent boredom in their parlor, the memory of her industrious parents in the Chicago area, the somewhat laissez-faire approach to parenting that she advocated, and the appreciation she had for her father’s gentleness. A brief aside in our conversation conveyed the concern of keeping her mind as she continues to age.
This concern is indeed a real one, as so many who reach later years often lose pieces of themselves, whether they be emotional or mental. A recent tasteful Chevrolet holiday commercial offers great sentiment around the increasing Alzheimers conditions of a family matriarch. It has struck a chord with many in recent weeks, as many have lost pieces of loved ones to such conditions. Indeed, many often get the feeling that they are caring for a stranger in the frail older body of one they once loved. It can be a terrible experience for all involved, which many are reluctant to acknowledge for shame and sadness.
I remember an elderly gentleman in one of my churches, who was still in full possession of his mental faculties, but the loss of his physical prowess greatly disturbed him. He regularly showed up to worship with bandages and grimaces as he had again been humbled by being unable to do things he had once been easily able to accomplish. His last years were spent in bitterness and frustration.
I have seen many older folks who lose their ability to string coherent thoughts together. Their minds become increasingly entangled with thoughts and memories all intertwined. Loved ones often become quite upset at the loss of an elder’s ability to think straight, to perceive reality, to react reasonably. Adult children angrily argue over details with a parent who isn’t really able to receive correction or offer true connection over frail details.
In a culture that worships youth, ability, vitality, it makes sense that one’s greatest fears would be in growing old, unable, feeble, and incoherent. For many, the fear is too great to even acknowledge. They keep their televisions loud enough, on all day as they go about their lives in their homes, to distract them from the disturbing thoughts of inevitability. When the days finally come upon them, they are unprepared, as they have avoided such thoughts all their lives. Watching so many enter these waning years of their lives utterly unprepared has greatly troubled me.
As my grandmother spoke this reality of potential loss into the air, I spoke about faith. She eagerly joined in, of course. My grandmother is a lifelong Methodist, having spent all of her years in the crucible of the church, which reads the scriptures that have power to introduce us to the one who saves.
I have had many years to wonder at how it is that God judges those who exit life as fractions of their former selves. What happens to those who once had great faculties, but who end life after many years of helpless drifting? What happens to those who once did great good, but who in the end were able to do very little? What about those who were once bold and outgoing in loving others, but who in recent years shrink from others as potential vectors of disease? Especially concerning, what happens to those who were once kind and gracious, but who become bitter and cruel in their final years? Those especially concern me, sometimes.
Many years ago, I read a book called Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom. I don’t remember much of it. One reflection I remember from the elderly man who speaks for older people: At the end of life, we naturally regress back to a more infantile state. It is not only physically that we grow more fragile, but also emotionally. Touch is again appreciated more than during the years of youth and vitality, when one has a healthy bubble of appropriate touch around them. Emotions are closer to the surface for the old, and creature comforts become more comforting. In many ways, the act of growing old is synonymous with the act of reverting back into a child, or even sometimes an infant.
Even so, some of the strongest people who have ever lived have been the elderly. Some of the strongest saints of the ages, those who have been able to undergo torture and deprivation, those who have been able to forego meals so that others could eat, have been elderly. The folks who have entered into their final years this way are those who spent their years of health and plenty preparing for their later years. I think there is often a great chasm between those who have prepared for old age and those who haven’t. While one cannot prepare for every given contingency, I find it generally wise to prepare for what we can, so that when such circumstances arise, we are not overcome.
Part of the hope I want to offer folks who are growing old (including myself) is that muscle memory exists. Even when our minds can no longer recall with the sharpness of detail all of the different facets of memories and arguments that once so easily flowed, they will still conduct us through life by maintaining the habits we have intentionally learned. It is amazing to see the ways in which music can activate people who have lost so much of themselves. This is because music goes deep down to our souls. But music is not the only thing that can speak down to our root selves. Faith can and should. When one habituates themselves to daily disciplines, self-denial, love of the other, leaning on the Lord…these things do not disappear when one begins to lose themselves. Rather, our tether to the Lord can hold even when the tether to ourselves gives way. The life of Christ can continue in us even if we become alienated from ourselves.
That is my hope as I continue to minister to old folks: That they daily commit themselves to the way of Christ, such that he will hold them together when they are no longer strong enough to do it. Indeed, I think that level of dependence often reveals that we were never truly holding ourselves together to begin with. It is God alone who sustains. The church needs faithful elders who model the ways of trusting God and leaning on him in all their ways. In that sense, then, “The hoary [white] head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness" (Prov. 16:31).
To be clear, we are to honor all elders, whether or not they have sought Christ in all their ways. While doing this, we must maintain special regard for those who have been so forged by Christ in days of health and plenty that they are able to weather the storms of old age gracefully and righteously. These folks are a treasure, and we should look to them in discerning how it is that we should live today.
I have more hope, though, and it was the hope animating me as I sat down to write this: That God’s memory is greater than ours. Before anything or anyone was created, God was. He watched as the waters of chaos stirred. Throughout history, the Lord has watched, not just men and angels, but beasts and birds. Jesus said
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”
- Matthew 10:29
The Lord has a capacity infinitely greater than ours to note and remember details. And, unlike us, he does not forget, nor revoke, what he has established. This is partly what we mean when we call him faithful. Though we are often unstable, forgetful, unwilling to stick by our words and character, God is not subject to these weaknesses: “If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13).
While God is active in history, there are also ways in which God is simply a faithful witness. Sometimes in the scriptures, longstanding things like mountains are called upon to be witnesses to eternal covenants (Micah 6:1, Psalm 72:3, Deut. 11:29). Yet God is eternal, outlasting even the mountains. The Lord notices the small details that self-absorbed morons like me fail to see. He does not forget. Nor is he limited to any time or place in his ability to see or remember. As in the case of all of us in our conception:
“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”
- Psalm 139:13-16
The Lord sees all, the Lord remembers all, the Lord maintains all, the Lord is faithful to all.
I cannot pretend to know the mind of God, nor how his judgment will work with respect to those who died after a significant fall from the prime of their lives. If any have willfully turned from the Lord and apostatized, there is not much reason to hope. However, if someone was established in Christ and then their mind slipped, I find reason to hope. I believe that the one who sees all, who sees the hearts of men, will honor commitments and intentions of the days of accountability and understanding.
God operates upon those who are no longer accountable. God is faithful with babies and children who die before being able to understand Christ. God is faithful with the mentally disabled, who cannot at all comprehend sin and salvation. I believe God is faithful with those who are a shadow of their former selves in a similar way.
While we might mourn the loss of what once was, we might also rejoice that God’s strength is made perfect in our weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:9). For those of us who stay close to the least of these, including the elderly, we will find reason to trust in God’s faithfulness.
To be holy is not to be strong, powerful, smart (though one can be holy while also being these things). To be holy is to be found in Christ, to be taking every breath for him. This same Christ, in his days of incarnation, showed a special consideration for the ‘least of these.’ This gives me great comfort.
I do not know if the Lord will see fit to give me a long life, or if at the end of such a life I will see great loss of the faculties I now so easily possess. I do not know if there is a day in the future when my loved ones retreat to a quiet room to cry because I no longer seem to be the same person they once knew and loved. But if such a day should come, I pray that the decisions I make today, to draw close to the Lord and be remade in him, will give succor, and save me from the temptations of the evil one.
There are special temptations at every stage of life. Satan comes after the old to mourn themselves, to give in to self-pity, to excuse their sin. We must always remember that “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). If God is faithful, then we can be, too, even in the final stages of life.
What the Lord asks of us is not easy, but that is okay. Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, has gone before us to prepare a way. We need only walk the path, trusting in his ability to complete the work he started in us. Sometimes the path takes more time in a certain place than we would like. Give up. Give in. Follow and trust the Lord. I trust that all will be well in the end.