‘It doesn’t matter.’ Three words to bring peace and offer perspective

This week I bumped into an old friend who has become an Alzheimer’s caregiver. We were in a visitation line at a funeral home, and my wife was inching forward, oblivious to the fact that my friend was in line ahead of us. I tried to pull her back where we belonged, but it wasn’t working.

“I think you’re gonna lose this one,” my friend said to me, and we both chuckled. And then she said something I’ve thought about more than once since then. “I’m learning to repeat one sentence that helps me hang on,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. So much I’ve thought is a big deal just isn’t. It doesn’t matter.”

I want to remember that. I want to believe it. But it’s hard.

Coloring with friends

I did pretty well when Evelyn wanted to take her “Timeless Creations” coloring book, with all the half-completed pages, to our weekly dinner with friends Sunday night. I tried not to be embarrassed when she busied herself frenetically coloring in it while the rest of us talked and laughed. I tried not to react when she slammed the book shut with an angry scowl after I told her I couldn’t sharpen the pencil too dull for her to use.

This pastime has filled many hours for Evelyn since I thought to give it a try.

It didn’t matter. Not really. Not in the big scheme of things. Our hostess kindly searched and found a small sharpener to give to Evelyn. I’ll try to keep track of it so we don’t lose it. I’ll try to remember it as a symbol of the love of friends for her and me. That’s what matters.

But so much just doesn’t.

Sweaters in August

The fact that she repeatedly chooses winter tops to wear in August doesn’t matter.

Inevitably, I must tell her again several times that we’re meeting friends for dinner—even after she helped me set the table or watched me prepare the salad. But it doesn’t matter.

She usually gets bored with our supper table once we’re finished eating and scurries around clearing the dirty dishes. Often she washes them or loads them in the dishwasher. But sometimes she retreats to the couch and ignores the fact that she’s left all of that for me to do. It doesn’t matter. (If we had no food, or if she had refused to eat—that would matter.)

It might seem sad that my caregiver friend and I are just now coming to see what really matters. But I’ll count it as a blessing that one gift of caregiving is seeing life with clearer perspective.

Flowers on the deck

So many get so agitated by stuff that really doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter that someone—even if it’s someone close—just doesn’t understand me or agree with me, or even like me. What matters is how I show respect or love for them.

I bought this beauty, a double-flowered hibiscus, from a sidewalk display in front of our local Kroger.

It doesn’t matter—at least not as much as I’ve sometimes thought it does—who wins the next election. No matter who prevails, he or she will make bad decisions with motives that seem suspect. But friends will love us, worship will happen at church on Sundays, and no politician will stop me from planting flowers on my deck.

It doesn’t matter, not really, that the flight was delayed, that I’ve lost my phone, or that I burned the casserole. The flight I finally took didn’t crash. I decided I could afford a new phone and then I found the old one stashed somewhere I’ve never put it before. And the casserole? Well . . . we did have six decent dinners that week!

It seems to me that part of aging gracefully is learning not to sweat the small stuff—and agree with author Richard Carlson, “It’s all small stuff.” Faith in God, trusted friends, love and support from someone close, abiding internally in a way that matches my external persona—these matter.

Faithfulness of God

A high point of that funeral we attended was a musical interlude in the middle. A pianist perfectly played a beautiful arrangement of the old hymn, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”

Tony Eight Media, via Unsplash.com

The soaring melody filled the room. Everyone was silent, except for one. A weak, high-pitched soprano rose from the seat beside me, warbling from memory the hymn’s lyric: “Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand has provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”

It was an instrumental solo, not meant for congregational singing. I thought about shushing Evelyn, but soon she was quiet on her own.

And it was OK. The fact that she alone decided to sing was somehow important to her. But for the rest of us . . . it didn’t matter.