One caregiver considers another new year: resignation and hope

It was about a decade ago when, reflecting on the year just past, I said, “Well, I never would have seen THAT coming!”

My company had been purchased by a private equity group that replaced our president with a new guy who fired most of our vice presidents, including my boss. On the New Year’s Eve several months before all that happened, I never would have predicted it.

I think about that each time we flip to a new calendar year. Since then, I’ve become ever more unwilling to imagine what the coming 12 months might bring. And this year, more than ever, I’m trying not to dwell on how our lives will continue to change before we see another January 1.

Inevitable change

Change is inevitable for everyone, I know. And I’m chastened to realize how I used to think my life would just keep staying pretty much the same.

August 2017

But now I look back at the old photos that regularly greet me when Facebook memories pop up, and sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the change that has washed over us. I study each one carefully, and ask myself, “How old were we then? How long before the Alzheimer’s diagnosis was this picture taken? Had we begun to see signs that I wouldn’t acknowledge or admit?”

Inexorable decline

My son and daughter-in-law were looking at old photos when we were together at Christmastime. She pointed to one, taken at the beach in 2017. Our grandson, now 6, was 8 months old. Evelyn was pretty, with perfect hair. Her smile was radiant. “She looks like a Kennedy in this picture!” my daughter-in-law said.

Today she has a hair-do that takes care of itself between weekly visits to the beauty shop. But back then she gave close attention to her hair every day.

Today she still wears the top she was wearing for that picture—if I find it and suggest it and pull out slacks to go with it.

Today, if we’re lucky, she still smiles for family pictures. But other times Parkinson’s distorts her expression, and sometimes when she’s left alone, she displays a vacant stare.

On that happy vacation day, I never would have predicted any of this.

Inestimable blessings

But not everything unforeseen has been bad.

Twelve months ago I wouldn’t have predicted the stream of kindnesses that have come to us this year: visits, meals, books, performances, expressions of concern.

I wouldn’t have known how much I need the breaks that loving caregivers are allowing me. And I wouldn’t have predicted how easily I’ve been able to recruit them. (One of them came to me before I would have dared asked her. And I’ve just been given the name of another lady we’re meeting for the first time next week.)

I wouldn’t have told you I’d start this blog and 14,000 different people would visit it at least once. I wouldn’t have realized how posting here not only brings me catharsis but somehow seems to offer encouragement to others.

I wouldn’t have imagined how much I would need and value the attentive support my kids have given me.

Undeniable hope

And so I enter the new year with hope, not hope for healing, and not for easier days, either. In fact, my hope is tinged with resignation to the fact that the next year may be more difficult than the one just finished. Instead, my hope, indeed my expectation, is somehow to receive the help I need to cope with the sad surprises that may be in store for us.

But that’s not all.

A friend sent a kind note with a silver star ornament to hang as a reminder, she said, of hope. Although she is a Christian, she didn’t quote Scripture, but I’m reminded of a phrase late in the New Testament, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

And just as I wrote this paragraph, another Facebook memory popped up, a video clip of CeCe Winans bringing her audience to its feet at the Kennedy Center tribute to Cicely Tyson in 2015. Her song, accompanied by a ringing trumpet and the choir from the school bearing Tyson’s name, was “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine.”

The video shows audience members singing along, and sophisticated attendees dressed in diamonds and tuxedos wiping tears from their faces as they felt the impact of the performance.

Frankly, I’m not hoping for many glorious days in 2023. I’ll settle for pleasant. But I will remind myself to search for and cling to that foretaste of glory divine. I’ll keep my eye on this star, nurturing hope for suffering someday ended and glory glimmering in brightness beyond the imagination of any new year’s prediction.