The start of Christmas season. I should be peaceful and grateful and filled with joy in Jesus. Instead I am impatient and critical. And I want everything my way and I am thwarted at every turn. Little frustrations, tinking on top of one another. I can’t find my Hall of Fame mug with my name engraved on it. It turns out to be on the floor of the upstairs bathroom with ginger tea in it. While up there I find a soaking wet towel lumped on the footstool. I decide to look for my Mother’s Day special mug. It is in the flowerbed by the driveway. I am in the basement and I hear a loud door slam in the bathroom next to me. I see a mystery girl slogging across the lawn around the house. I turn again to the plumber who is showing me where the corroded washer hose is leaking. Tink, tink, tink. I have worked really hard my whole life. Can’t just have my own mug? Or even my backup mug? I forget the plumber has the water turned off and I flush the toilet, draining the water lines all the way from the pump house 150 yards to the house. When we restart the water, the faucets will be spurting and barking and blowing shots of air. Frustrated with myself, with Joe, with Jimmy, with Mystery Girl, with the granddaughters, with the plumber who said one hour and has been here nine hours. We bring in the artificial tree from the barn and it has a mouse nest in it. The plumber leaves but we can only use cold water for laundry and can’t use the toilet til tomorrow.
Last week my Auntie Ellen died. She was declining; we had seen her recently in her Medicaid nursing home. It was startling and revolting and doomsaying. All the patients were on Medicaid— missing teeth, not clean, cognitive problems, hunched in wheelchairs, staring at us, begging for some of Ellen’s milkshake. The entire place pushed the ammonia smell of urine out the front slider when it opened. I was uncomfortable, disgusted, ashamed, faintly nauseous. Auntie Ellen said she did not think she would get out of there. And she didn’t.
This weekend our high school friend JoAnn died. She had battled diabetes since 1960 and this year diabetes won. I have had a hard time accepting that someone so feisty, so alive, so strong, could be brought so low.
I have now seen a number of people in the final stages of the walk toward death. Auntie Betty, grinning through it and pretending she was fine. My dad, at home under hospice care, us traumatized and unready. Joe’s dad, his eyes becoming more and more empty for months til he quit breathing. My mom, moving from near-death to assisted living with growing dementia, suddenly got sepsis and died, with 7 DNR posters in her apartment. Joe’s mom, with a sudden dip from living at home alone to being in a rehab facility and being ready to quit fighting. Auntie Ellen, resigned and brave in a dismal home. JoAnn, toes amputated one by one, leg broken with a pin in it, heart unable to pump the fluids through, afraid to stay alone at night, yelling at every nurse, Aide, PT, OT, swallowing specialist, mad at anyone who touched her. But the thing they had in common: Lack of peace about dying. Anxiousness at a deep level, amplified by medications that remove filters. Did they know? Did they see death grinning at them? Or did they see the light leading them to family waiting in crowded heaven?
And the likely source of my discontent: how do I prepare for the inevitable future?