The last time? Deciding when and how to surrender to reality

Sunday evening Evelyn was stretched out on the couch with her feet on my lap as I sat at the other end. We were surrounded by the laughter and chatter of eight friends gathered in the living room of the vacation rental where we’d spent the weekend.

These are 50-year friends, former college classmates and roommates, some of them former colleagues, or former teachers, or former students. The connections among us are varied and rich. This was the fifth time we’d spent Labor Day weekend together in a mini-retreat and happy reunion.

I looked down at Evelyn, as I often do, to make sure she was OK. Her gaze caught mine, and she said, “I want to go home.”

“We’re going home tomorrow,” I whispered. She raised up from her cushion to hear me better. “We’re six or seven hours away from home here in Tennessee, and we can’t go home tonight.”

Her face wrinkled into an angry scowl. She set her jaw, clinched her fists, and let out a frustrated shudder as she slammed her head back down on her pillow.

I think she was overwhelmed trying to process all the talk coming at her. Tired. Frustrated. Confused.

“Here, Honey. Come with me,” I said and ushered her out of the room. The conversations around us had quieted.

I convinced her just to go to bed for the night. (It was almost 10:00.) I assured her we’d be getting up and heading out first thing the next morning. She was calmer as we went through the bedtime routine of toothbrushing and medicine taking. But I don’t think she slept till I came to bed well after 11:00.

Cherished

Even though this get-together had been planned for almost a year and I had long ago paid our portion of the rental fees, I had not committed to making the trip till the week before we left. Evelyn has several physical problems, caused mostly by Parkinson’s disease I think, in addition to Alzheimer’s. And I wasn’t sure it would be good for her—or me—to be away from home so far and for so long.

But I hated to miss the nurture of the weekend. These folks were Evelyn’s friends, too, and they always give her such kind and affirming attention.

This wasn’t the first, nor will it be the last occasion to decide whether it’s time to give up a cherished pastime or tradition. I’ve already written about this, but each new decision is another crossroads. There’s a tendency to keep holding on, and I’m not sure that’s always bad. There’s no health in retreating to our one-story ranch and isolating ourselves from all that makes life full.

But there does come a time to surrender to reality, and finding it is a challenge, especially when the reality keeps changing.

Normal?

I’ve observed that some people dealing with a degenerative, debilitating disease tend to keep pushing too long. Sometimes they don’t stop doing something until they try once too often, with disastrous results. And so an octogenarian is carried off a cruise ship on a stretcher or an Alzheimer’s patient gets lost in an airport.

The last thing I want is for any get-together to be compromised or rearranged around our special needs. Like an eighth grader trying to fit in, I find myself time and again trying to minimize or hide or compensate for abnormal behavior in an ongoing quest to fit in.

This is perhaps a bit neurotic, I’ll admit, but I don’t think it’s uncommon. Everyone spends a lifetime responding to social cues and adapting to the norms of the office, the church service, or the neighborhood lawn party. There’s nothing wrong with normal.

But the life I’m living is not normal. At least not totally. Even so, I find solace and equilibrium in embracing whatever measure of expected the day will allow. But deciding when to let go is an ongoing challenge.

Final?

I was reflecting on this with our friend Beth when I called to ask if we could stay with her overnight in Lexington on the way to Chattanooga. (That wasn’t normal. Five years ago, we wouldn’t have given a second thought to making the trip in one day.) She was glad to welcome us. But I’m remembering something she said halfway through the conversation. “At some point you realize, ‘This is the last time for this.’”

She was making a generalization, not giving advice, but I can’t forget the sentence. Anyone can waste a lot of energy wondering whether some experience or another is the last time to enjoy it. Do you remember the last time you wrestled with your son and won? The last book you read to your preschooler? The last kiss you placed on your mother’s forehead?  Sometimes life is sustained by believing, “We’ll do this again.” But sometimes there’s health in acknowledging the last time.

Evelyn and I have a growing list of “last times,” but there’s no future in dwelling on them. Even in our changed situation—indeed, sometimes because of it—new special moments are ahead. There’s strength and hope in looking for them.

Am I glad we went this time? Definitely. (The pictures don’t reveal the challenges, but they do convey the joy.)

Will we participate in this annual tradition again next year?

Maybe, definitely maybe. But it’s much too soon to decide that now.