Yesterday we had an extended family gathering for Christmas 2023. The family has expanded over the years, with our parents having 4 children, their 4 children had 9 children, and the 9 now have children. It was good to be together.
However, the gatherings have taken a turn this past year with my father having passed away in February and the increasing depth of my mother’s Alzheimer’s taking effect throughout the year.
Fortunately, we were able to bring my mother into the gathering where we sang Christmas songs and allowed her to see what was happening with the kids. At times she appeared to understand, even smiling, and at times she appeared confused. Her speech is slurred so conversations are mostly not possible.
It was difficult to see her in this state as she was always at the centre of these gatherings, actively participating in playing games, long conversations and bringing her amazing Christmans baking that we all appreciated.
The emotions we feel are real. We feel bad for our mother / grandmother, and wonder what she is experiencing. We wonder how we are to respond. We talk about her “quality of life” and perhaps (just me thinking out loud) attempt to make ourselves feel better by how we talk about the care she is receiving at the long-term care home she resides in. (In reality, she had always asked that this would be the place that she would live when she got older.)
Yet for me the question always is the same – how to connect this with discipleship, because discipleship is always about the day to day living, and it must encompass all aspects, the good and the bad.
In a previous blog a few years ago, I talked about attending funerals as a piece of our discipleship. To be able to reflect on the life of the person while at the same time reflecting on your own life. To recognize that this person no longer has life to live here on earth and that one day this will be my reality.
So as I engage with my mother, I can feel the pain in myself as I watch her become less and less of who I knew her to be, and also lean in to love her just the way she is. I can mourn the fact that life has a way of degrading all of us over time, and be reminded that this was never how God intended things to be and that Jesus chose to enter into our world and experience it alongside us.
I can, and in fact I must, not shy away from these encounters with my mother or in watching the family experience the pain, but lean in close, to hug her, kiss her, talk to her, look her in the eyes and let the Holy Spirit shape my heart and mind. To know that these encounters are moulding me. Suffering, the degrading of our minds and bodies, is something that we will all experience. That the solutions that “the world” may suggest are most likely not ones that God would have for us. That “quality of life” conversations can be a distraction from what God wants to do in us.
These are discipleship moments, in the same way reading scripture, praying, solitude and serving are. And if I allow them and give space for the Holy Spirit to speak, then I can experience the amazing tension of pain and beauty in my discipleship journey.
For the kingdom.