Friday, 25 September 2009

• Singing with a 95-Year-Old

  

  This past week I have spent with my 95-year-old Grandma, Margaret Starbuck McConnell.  Born to a farming family in 1914, my grandmother grew up with several siblings, all of whom worked hard their entire lives.  Some of them have passed away, but Grandma and one or two of her siblings are still left.  My grandma knows who I am most of the time, but sometimes she forgets and asks how my mother's only daughter is doing.  Sort of a bitter-sweet thing: she's thinking of me, but doesn't realize that she's talking to me.

  She gets up each morning now, between 7:30 and 8:00 (and feels guilty for getting up so late), eats breakfast around 9:00, spends the morning looking out the windows, trying to watch the birds and listening to them sing.  On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, she goes to the Senior's Centre for lunch, and there she still reaches out to those less fortunate than she.  There's a woman there that cannot speak, and no one sits with, so Grandma sits with her and talks to her, even though she herself cannot hear very well and cannot converse very well at all.  Then she comes home after lunch.  She makes many trips back and forth to her bedroom with her rolling walker, carrying her coffee cup or water bottle in the basket under the cushion on it, and sometimes sits down in her recliner, or takes a nap on the bed.  Then, out to the sunporch again to watch the birds, play cards or snap beans.  Then dinner.  Then more sitting and thinking.  Sometimes she does the dishes.  Then she starts to head to bed at about 7:30 or 8:00, and finally crawls under the covers with her eye-drops applied, her glasses off, her pj's on and the radio tuned to a classical music station.  Fighting sleeplessness follows the next few hours, then off she drifts, only to awaken the next morning to do the same things again.

  In many ways, it's hard to see her like this.  I remember my vibrant, highly active 80+ Grandma, without a walker, without need of assistance.  I had never seen her without her dentures until this week, and, in fact, thought she still had her own teeth (she's always had good teeth).  It was sort of an emotional shock when I walked in one night to say good-night, and she was laying in bed, her glasses off, her eyes puffy & red, her teeth out.  At night, she gets more emotional, naturally being tired, and she clings with such strength when you hug her, it's a bit shocking that she has so much strength left in her shrinking form.

  But as we've spent time together this week, my Grandma has turned to me at least four times a day and said, "I have had a good life.  The Lord has been good to me.  And I talk to Him every day.  Every morning when I get up, and every night when I go to bed, and sometimes in between."  We had glasses of iced-milk (we're the only ones in the family that both like it), swapped some stories about my childhood and her life on the McConnell Berry Farm of Mount Vernon, Ohio, and then we sang some old hymns together.

  And I was reminded of what a precious gift we have in Life.  Not just "life" that we live, day after day, but the Life that Jesus Christ Himself grants us through His grace if we simply trust Him and believe in Him.  Grandma couldn't remember the words of the verses of the old hymns, but she knew the choruses.  She sang with a gusto on "In the Garden," but she was strongest on "I Need Thee Every Hour."  And it hit me: she had learned how to truly trust Him with every hour...all the ones past, the present and finally, the future ones, when she'll spend the rest of Eternity safely with Him.

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