Holding a hand

Now I told you a few weeks ago that I was back blogging, and raised expectations (mine anyway) that I would post on my site every week and be full of incisive thoughts and faithful reflections– a veritable potpourri of sanctity and holiness and calm.

Then my mum got ill.

Illness does this. It trips you up and upends you on the floor with your nose bloodied and bleeding, and your head full of angry, anxious, irrational thoughts because you are no longer in charge and you can’t save the people you love. And being a Christian or even a Franciscan can’t change things either because when it comes down to rock bottom (which is where you land) you have no control and are totally and absolutely at the mercy of other people and events.

Maybe that’s also what Francis meant by poverty. When we really have nothing left and are totally dependent on mercy and grace.

Now my mum is in her late nineties and I know that one day, in her words she will, ‘Go to be with the Lord.' But I figured I wanted to just mention to the Lord how that might happen and hope that it didn’t involve falls, Covid, pneumonia and protracted stays in hospital. She’s 98 for goodness sake, Lord. Give her a break.

But that’s where we’ve been. And although my precious mum wants to be with her Lord, she figured he could wait a bit longer. So she raised two metaphorical fingers to the prognosis (not that she’d ever really do that) and hung on. And she is now in a care home where she is looked after by angels who wear pink and green and yellow polo shirts and minister to their little flock far more each day than I ever have in my lifetime.

Many of the residents have dementia and they have gone – as the hospital chaplain said to me, ‘Yonderly.’ (That’s Yorkshire by the way for dementia.) My mum has gone Yonderly too, and we communicate in this foreign country where we need to learn a whole new language and ways and customs of viewing the world. I think Yonderly can be quite a frightening place for those who don’t understand where they are, and so it’s really important to hold their hand and walk with them, finding common ground from here to there so they don’t feel alone. Mostly with my mum, that’s with hymns. The other day, she was distressed when I visited and couldn’t tell me why she felt so upset. I sat and sang hymns to her and she calmed and listened and even (heartbreakingly) tried to join in. At the other end of the room, others were watching ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ but there was room enough for all in this sacred space. And then a few around my mum joined in as well with the hymns and we had quite a little choir together by lunchtime.

And I’ve been thinking about being Franciscan and all the flipping expectations I put on myself and how I always, but always feel I fall short and I’d better hightail out of the Third Order before anyone finds me out. And I think of how my prayer life has gone awol and I’ve not read my Bible much lately, (okay, not at all) and I haven’t made it to church in weeks much less communion.

But then, I pray over my mum as she sleeps. I place my hand on her head and ask Jesus to take care of her. I pray a blessing that I remember, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace.’

And I think from what I know of Francis that he’d be okay with that. He hung out with lepers and loved them and bandaged their sores and tended their wounds. And dementia can feel a bit like that in today’s acquisitive, acquiring, achieving society. These are people who are left with very little but who they are. And they are not in control (as none of are really) and are so dependent upon the love and commitment of those around them. But that is what makes us human – this conscious desire and willingness to take care of each other and tend and reassure and sooth. As one very elderly lady who grabbed my hand and looked me straight in the eye said, ‘It will all be alright in the end.’

And she is right. It will all be alright in the end. And that’s because as Richard Rohr says, we have ‘a kind of cosmic joy that the final chapter is good, that we don’t have to be afraid.’

And when we reach rock bottom, we are not on our own. There is a safe place to hide, hands to hold, arms encircling, a love that will not let us go.

From now to eternity.

Image by MiVargof