Life and Death

Today is All Saints Day, and though we are supposedly a low church, non-liturgical tradition, at my church that means we have a memorial liturgy in which we remember church members who have died in the last year, other loved ones and some famous(/ish) people who have died in the last year, any loved one who's ever died that we miss, and any other loss that causes us grief. It's quite nice I think.

It also means I preach about death, which is always a little sketchy, but I think I did okay today.

Then, this afternoon, after church, I went to the nursing home to check on a member and get her signature on a birthday card for a friend of hers who grew up in the church (a former pastor's daughter, in fact) who is turning 80 this week. While I was there, I went down the hall to meet another woman for the first time.

This other woman is someone I should have met a long time ago. She's not actually a member of my church, but she's been in our directory and on our prayer list (as being in a care facility) longer than I've been here. She was a member of a sister congregation in another nearby town that closed about 6 months after I came here.

I think I tried to go see her once, but it didn't work out. And we tried to Christmas carol to her once, but she was gone.

Anyway, in 8 years, I'd never met her, and I guess it was finally time.

She was quite nice, though pretty upfront about the fact that it took me a while to get there to see her. She wasn't nasty about it though, just appreciative. She told me a little about herself. In fact, she did most of the talking, as she is pretty hard of hearing.

And here's what struck me. She is 99 years old and perfectly lucid. She has a 79-year-old son who has Alzheimer's. Her husband died from it. The son lives a couple hours away in the metropolis where his daughter is. They have breakfast together over the phone every Saturday. But she seemed to realize that was not going to last much longer.

I'm not sure I've heard of anything that sad in a while. Can you imagine being old enough to experience your son getting Alzheimer's? Life and death are perhaps equally difficult.