Beginning with tears, ending with reflection: An old man’s pattern
A friend stopped me to say hello in the hallway of the church building Sunday morning as I walked toward the worship auditorium. After we had spoken briefly, she asked, “Have you been crying?”
She caught me. I had shed tears on the way to church a few minutes earlier. Honestly, I don’t know why. Something in the music I was playing triggered a memory or regret or thought about the future.
“Oh, I cry all the time,” I said, embarrassed. I thought I had hidden any evidence of it this time, before I got out of the car.
True to form
Later I sat at brunch with two couples from church, and we were reflecting on the challenging turns life had taken for each of us.
One friend suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and when I asked, she confessed how her body aches and her feet don’t function unless she takes her medicine, does her stretches, and makes time to rest.
The other couple is walking with their 30-something daughter through treatment for breast cancer. The prognosis is good, but the outcome is never certain, and it’s a long journey to healing. Meanwhile, the dad in this pair is working on getting his chronic migraines under control.
Whatever else old people talk about, the conversation inevitably leads to at least a mention of maladies. Sunday we were true to form.
Confronted by failure
But we talked about much more than doctors and remedies. One of my friends commented on the sermon we had heard that morning. The text was the story of Jesus’ encounter with a woman caught in adultery, “in the very act,” as one translation puts it.
She was hauled in front of Jesus by a self-righteous circle of men who used her indiscretion as a test of Jesus’ orthodoxy. The Law of Moses called for any adulterous woman (or man!) to be stoned. These Pharisees and teachers of the Law challenged Jesus to weigh-in on what they should do.
He didn’t answer but instead turned his back and stooped to write something in the dust at his feet. They continued to press him, and finally “he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’”
They became silent, and then they quietly walked away.
Weary with age
One friend at our table highlighted a detail from the story I had not noticed. The Scripture says the older men left first, and then the younger men followed.
We discussed why it happened this way. Was it simply a matter of respect for the younger to wait for the older? Or did the seniors in the circle leave first because Jesus’ challenge hit them the hardest?
Sentir y Viajar photo at istockphoto.com
They had lived longer, and likely sinned more, than some in the group half their age. Were they weary with the memory of their own mistakes and missteps? Had life worn them down and punctured the bravado that would have kept them arguing with Jesus a few decades earlier?
My questions led me to reflect on the reasons for my own tears that morning. The obvious explanation is ongoing grief at losing the vibrant, caring, beautiful woman who now is but a shell of her former self.
But that’s not all. Given my tendency toward nostalgia, I think I’d look back with longing at 70-plus years of life even if Alzheimer’s hadn’t invaded.
It’s an old man’s lot, to smile at all the happy experiences that came with youth and vigor. And to shudder at the memory of his own mistakes and missteps.
I know few men my age who’d be first to cast a stone at someone else shattered by failure. They’ve been shattered a few times themselves.
No more tears
I stopped to see Evelyn on the way home from lunch. I found her sitting at a table poring over the newsletter from a local Catholic church an aide had put in front of her. As I sat there, she read aloud tidbits about an upcoming picnic and clothing drive. I grabbed a pile of washcloths and a sewing card from her room, hoping to engage her with a new activity.
At my invitation, she slowly, meticulously folded each washcloth into a tidy square with perfectly matched edges. Lacing the cord through the holes around the card's border was a bigger challenge. She wrapped it around the center instead, making sure the end was tucked in and not dangling free.
After I’d been there an hour, I found a magazine with pretty pictures of flowers and birds for her to enjoy before leaving to go home. I had a blog post to write and two loads of laundry to fold. I found a chance between rain showers to take my walk, and I did my own stretching exercises to help my sore feet and aching back.
I looked through my calendar and made sure I remembered every class and breakfast and meeting jotted down there. Not one square for the coming days was empty. With no tears, I anticipated the good week ahead.